单选题Civil-liberties advocates reeling from the recent revelations on surveillance had something else to worry about last week: the privacy of the billions of search queries made on sites like Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. As part of a long-running court case, the government has asked those companies to turn over information on its users' search behavior. All but Google have handed over data, and now the Department of Justice has moved to compel the search giant to turn over the goods. What makes this case different is that the intended use of the information is not related to national security, but the government's continuing attempt to police Internet pornography. In 1998, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), but courts have blocked its implementation due to First Amendment concerns. In its appeal, the DOJ wants to prove how easy it is to inadvertently stumble upon porn. In order to conduct a controlled experiment—to be performed by a UC Berkeley professor of statistics—the DOJ wants to use a large sample of actual search terms from the different search engines. It would then use those terms to do its own searches, employing the different kinds of filters each search engine offers, in an attempt to quantify how often "material that is harmful to minors" might appear. Google contends that since it is not a party to the case, the government has not right to demand its proprietary information to perform its test. "We intend to resist their motion vigorously," said Google attorney Nicole Wong. DOJ spokesperson Charles Miller says that the government is requesting only the actual search terms, and not anything that would link the queries to those who made them. (The DOJ is also demanding a list of a million Web sites that Google indexes to determine the degree to which objectionable sites are searched.) Originally, the government asked for a treasure trove of all searches made in June and July 2005 ; the request has been scaled back to one week's worth of search queries. One oddity about the DOJ's strategy is that the experiment could conceivably sink its own case. If the built-in filters that each search engine provides are effective in blocking porn sites, the government will have wound up proving what the opposition has said all along—you don't need to suppress speech to protect minors on the Net. "We think that our filtering technology does a good job protecting minors from inadvertently seeing adult content," says Ramez Naam, group program manager of MSN Search. Though the government intends to use these data specifically for its COPA-related test, it's possible that the information could lead to further investigations and, perhaps, subpoenas to find out who was doing the searching. What if certain search terms indicated that people were contemplating terrorist actions or other criminal activities? Says the DOJ's Miller, "I'm assuming that if something raised alarms, we would hand it over to the proper [authorities]." Privacy advocates fear that if the government request is upheld, it will open the door to further government examination of search behavior. One solution would be for Google to stop storing the information, but the company hopes to eventually use the personal information of consenting customers to improve search performance. "Search is a window into people's personalities," says Kurt Opsahl, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney. "They should be able to take advantage of the Internet without worrying about Big Brother looking over their shoulders. /

单选题Which of the following is LEAST likely to be a statement of pro-oil commentators?

单选题Questions 1-5 Feminist sociolinguists, over the course of the last few decades, have conducted studies that they believe support the conclusion that women are routinely discriminated against in English- speaking society. They point to the words used to describe women, as well as the words used to describe society as a whole, as indications that the English language and therefore the English- speaking culture, is slanted towards the advantage of males. The words used to describe women are used as an instrument by feminist sociolinguists to denote an inherent sexism in the English language. Word pairs such as master and mistress and sir and madam, they claim, epitomize such sexism. All of the words in question once held positive connotations but, while the masculine forms have retained their respectable associations, the feminine forms have undergone pejoration and now imply sexual promiscuity and other negative characteristics. Feminist researchers assume that such pejoration indicate that the status of women in English-speaking society is relatively low. These researchers also find fault with the use of masculine words to describe unisex entities. For example, they feel that there is nothing inherently manly about mankind, the best man for the job, or the common man. Similarly, the use of such constructions as the "the average student is worried about his grades" indicate to these researchers an inherent sexism in English that is reflective of the cultures in which they are produced. Carolyn Jacobson, author of Non-sexist Language has proposed a solution to this conundrum. She advocates the elimination of all sexed words in favor of gender-neutral terms. No longer should we refer to actors and actresses or waiters and waitresses, as such dichotomies allow for the possibility of negative connotations being associated with the feminine designation. Likewise, she believes that phrases such as mankind should give way to human kind and that the use of the masculine pronoun as the default should be abandoned in favor of neutral constructions. Thus, when sexism is eliminated from the English language, the culture will be more amenable to the deliverance of women as well.

单选题In the context of the passage, the statement "I am the master of my body. I am the first and the last of my nation subject only to the great spirit." (Para. 6) implies that the person being quoted ______.

单选题

单选题 Question 23-26

单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

单选题The article can be classified as one of

单选题

单选题What is money? That is not so simple a question as might appear. In fact, money can only be defined in terms of the functions it performs—that is, by the need it fulfills. As Sir Ralph Hawtrey once noted, "Money is one of those concepts which, like a teaspoon or an umbrella, but unlike an earthquake or a buttercup, are definable primarily by the use or purpose which they serve." Money is anything, regardless of its physical or legal characteristics, that customarily and principally performs certain functions. Three such functions are usually specified, corresponding to the three basic needs served by money—the need for a medium of exchange, the need for a unit of account, and the need for a store of value. Most familiar is the first, the function of a medium of exchange, whereby goods and services are paid for and contractual obligations discharged. In performing this role the key attribute of money is general acceptability in the settlement of debt. The second function of money, that of a unit of account, is to provide a medium of information—a common denominator or numeraire in which goods and services may be valued and debts expressed. In performing this role money is said to be a "standard of value" or "measure of value" in valuing goods and services and a "standard of deferred payment" in expressing debts. The third function of money, that of a store of value, is to provide a means of holding wealth. The development of money was one of the most important steps in the evolution of human society, comparable in the words of one writer "with the domestication of animals, the cultivation of the land, and the harnessing of power". Before money there was only barter, the archetypical economic transaction, which required an inverse double coincidence of wants in order for exchange to occur. The two parties to any transaction each had to desire what the other was prepared to offer. This was an obviously inefficient system of exchange since large amounts of time had to be devoted to the necessary process of search and bargaining. Under even the most elemental circumstances barter was unlikely to exhaust all opportunities for advantageous trade. Bartering is costly in ways too numerous to discuss. Among others, bartering requires an expenditure of time and the use of specialized skills necessary for judging the commodities that are being exchanged. The more advanced the specialization in production and the more complex the economy, the costlier it will be to undertake all the transactions necessary to make any given good reach its ultimate user by using barter. The introduction of generalized exchange intermediaries cut the Gordian knot of barter by decomposing the single transaction of sale and purchase, thereby obviating the need for a double coincidence of wants. This served to facilitate multilateral exchange; the costs of transactions reduced, exchange ratios could be more efficiently equated with the demand and supply of goods and services. Consequently, specialization in production was promoted and the advantages of economic division of labor became attainable all because of the development of money. The usefulness of money is inversely proportional to the number of currencies in circulation. The greater the number of currencies, the less is any single money able to perform efficiently as a lubricant to improve resource allocation and reduce transaction costs. Diseconomies remain because of the need for multiple price quotations (diminishing the information savings derived from money"s role as unit of account) and for frequent currency conversions (diminishing the stability and predictability of purchasing power derived from money"s roles as medium of exchange and store of value). In all national societies there has been a clear historical tendency to limit the number of currencies, and eventually to standardize the domestic money on just a single currency issued and managed by the national authorities. The result has been a minimization of total transaction costs within nation-states. Between nation-states, however, costs or transactions remain relatively high because the number of currencies remains high. Does this suggest that global efficiency would be maximized if the number of currencies in the world were minimized? Is this the optimal organizational principle for international monetary relations? Not necessarily. It is true that total transaction costs, other things being equal, could be minimized by standardizing on just a single global money. "On the basis of the criterion of maximizing the usefulness of money, we should have a single world currency." But there are other criteria of judgment as well. Economic efficiency, as I have indicated, is a multi-variate concept. And we shall soon see that the costs of a single world currency or its equivalent, taking full account of both the single microeconomic benefit of lower transaction costs.

单选题Questions 1 to 4 are based on the following talk.

单选题[此试题无题干]

单选题It will be quite a long time ______ she is back again, so don't be too cross with her. A. that B. since C. before D. until

单选题 Questions 16～20 The Welsh language has always been the ultimate marker of Welsh identity, but a generation ago it looked as if Welsh would go the way of Manx, once widely spoken on the Isle of Man but now extinct. Government's financing and central planning, however, have helped reverse the decline of Welsh. Road signs and official public documents are written in both Welsh and English, and schoolchildren are required to learn both languages. Welsh is now one of the most successful of Europe's regional languages, spoken by more than a hail-million of the country's three million people. The revival of the language, particularly among young people, is part of a resurgence of national identity sweeping through this small, proud nation. Last month Wales marked the second anniversary of the opening of the National Assembly, the first parliament to be convened here since 1404. The idea behind devolution was to restore the balance within the union of nations making up the United Kingdom. With most of the people and wealth, England has always had bragging rights. The partial transfer of legislative powers from Westminster, implemented by Tony Blair, was designed to give the other members of the club—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—a bigger say and to counter centrifugal forces that seemed to threaten the very idea of the union. The Welsh showed little enthusiasm for devolution. Whereas the Scots voted overwhelmingly for a parliament, the vote for a Welsh assembly scraped through by less than one percent on a turnout of less than 25 percent. Its powers were proportionately limited. The Assembly can decide how money from Westminster or the European Union is spent. It cannot, unlike its counterpart in Edinburgh, enact laws. But now that it is here, the Welsh are growing to like their Assembly. Many people would like it to have more powers. Its importance as figurehead will grow with the opening in 2003, of a new debating chamber, one of many new buildings that are transforming Cardiff from a decaying seaport into a Baltimore-style waterfront city. Meanwhile a grant of nearly two million dollars from the European Union will tackle poverty. Wales is one of the poorest regions in Western Europe—only Spain, Portugal, and Greece have a lower standard of living. Newspapers and magazines are filled with stories about great Welsh men and women, boosting self-esteem. To familiar faces such as Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton have been added new icons such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, the movie star, and Bryn Terfel, the opera singer. Indigenous foods like salt marsh lamb are in vogue. And Wales now boasts a national airline. Awyr Cymru. Cymru, which means "land of compatriots," is the Welsh name for Wales. The red dragon, the nation's symbol since the time of King Arthur, is everywhere-on T-shirts, rugby jerseys and even cell phone covers. "Until very recent times most Welsh people had this feeling of being second-class citizens," said Dyfan Jones, an 18-year-old student. It was a warm summer night, and I was sitting on the grass with a group of young people in Llanelli, an industrial town in the south, outside the rock music venue of the National Eisteddfod, Wales's annual cultural festival. The disused factory in front of us echoed to the sounds of new Welsh bands. "There was almost a genetic tendency for lack of confidence," Dyfan continued. Equally comfortable in his Welshness as in his membership in the English-speaking, global youth culture and the new federal Europe, Dyfan, like the rest of his generation, is growing up with a sense of possibility unimaginable ten years ago. "We used to think. We can't do anything, we're only Welsh. Now I think that's changing. "

单选题Life expectancy in the richest countries of the world now exceeds the poorest by more than 30 years, figures show. The gap is widening across the world, with Western countries and the growing economies of Latin America and the Far East advancing more rapidly than Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union. Average life expectancy in Britain and similar countries of the OECD was 78.8 in 2000-2005, an increase of more than seven years since 1970-1975 and almost 30 years over the past century. In sub-Saharan Africa, life expectancy has increased by just four months since 1970, to 46.1 years. Narrowing this "health gap" will involve going beyond the immediate causes of disease-poverty, poor sanitation and infection—to tackle the "causes of the causes" —the social hierarchies in which people live, says the report published by the Global Commission on the Social Determinants of Health established by the WHO in 2005. Professor Sir Michael Marmot, chairman of the commission, who first coined the term "status syndrome", said social status was the key to tackling health inequalities worldwide. In the 1980s, in a series of ground-breaking studies among Whitehall civil servants, Professor Marmot showed that the risk of death among those on the lower rungs of the career ladder was four times higher than those at the top, and that the difference was linked with the degree of control the individuals had over their lives. He said yesterday that the same rule applied in poorer countries. If people increased their status and gained more control over their lives they improved their health because they were less vulnerable to the economic and environmental threats. "When people think about those in poor countries they tend to think about poverty, lack of housing, sanitation and exposure to infectious disease. But there is another issue, the social gradient in health which I called status syndrome. It is not just those at the bottom of the hierarchy who have worse health; it is all the way along the scale. Those second from the bottom have worse health than those above them but better health than those below." The interim report of the commission, in the online edition of The Lancet, says the effects of status syndrome extend from the bottom to the top of the hierarchy, with Swedish adults holding a PhD having a lower death rate than those with a master's degree. The study says.. "The gradient is a worldwide occurrence, seen in low-income, middle-income and high- income countries. It means we are all implicated. " The result is that even within rich countries such as Britain there are striking inequalities in life expectancy. The poorest men in Glasgow have a life expectancy of 54, lower than the average in India. The answer, the report says, is empowerment, of individuals, communities and whole countries. "Technical and medical solutions such as medical care are without doubt necessary. But they are insufficient." Professor Marmot said: "We talk about three kinds of empowerment. If people don't have the material necessities, they cannot be empowered. The second kind is psycho-social empowerment: more control over their lives. The third is political empowerment, having a voice." The commission's final report, to be published soon, will identify the ill effects of low status and make recommendations for how they can be tackled. In Britain a century ago, infant mortality among the rich was about 100 per 1,000 live births compared with 250 per 1, 000 among the poor. Infant mortality is still twice as high among the poor in Britain, but the rates have come down dramatically to 7 per 1,000 among the poor and 3.5 among the rich. Professor Marmot said: "We have made dramatic progress, but this is not about abolishing the rankings, but by identifying the ill effects of hierarchies we can make huge improvement./

单选题Questions 27～30

单选题 {{B}}Questions 15—18{{/B}}

单选题The first person I came across who"d got the measure of e-mall was an American friend who was high up in a big corporation. Some years ago, when this method of communication first seeped into business life from academia, his company in New York and its satellites across the globe were among the first to get it. In the world"s great seats of learning, e-mail had for some years allowed researchers to share vital new jokes. And if there was cutting-edge wit to be had, there was no way my friend"s corporation would be without it. One evening in New York, he was late for a drink we"d arranged. "Sorry," he said, "I"ve been away and had to deal with 998 e-mails in my queue." "Wow," I said, "I"m really surprised you made it before midnight." "It doesn"t really take that tong," be explained, "if you simply delete them all." True to form, he had developed a strategy before most of us had even heard of e-mail. If any information he was sent was sufficiently vital, his lack of response would ensure the sender rang him up. If the sender wasn"t important enough to have his private number, the communication couldn"t be sufficiently important. My friend is now even more senior in the same company, so the strategy must work, although these days, I don"t tend to send him many e-mails. Almost every week now, there seems to be another report suggesting that we are all being driven crazy by the torment of e-mall. But if this is the case, it"s only because we haven"t developed the same discrimination in dealing with e-mail as we do with post. Have you ever mistaken an important letter for a piece of unsolicited advertising and thrown it out? Of course you haven"t. This is because of the obliging stupidity of 99 per cent of advertisers, who just can"t help making their mailshots look like the junk mail that they are. Junk e-mail looks equally unnecessary to read. Why anyone would feel the slightest compulsion to open the sort of thing entitled "SPECIALOFFER@junk.com" I cannot begin to understand. Even viruses, those sneaky messages that contain a bug which can corrupt your whole computer system, come helpfully labelled with packaging that shrieks "danger, do not open". Handling e-mail is an art. Firstly, you junk anything with an exclamation mark or a string of capital letters, or from any address you don"t recognise or feel confident about. Secondly, while I can"t quite support my American friend’s radical policy, e-mails don"t all have to be answered. Because e-mailing is so easy, there"s a tendency for correspondence to carry on for ever, but it is permissible to end a strand of discussion by simply not discussing it any longer— or to accept a point of information sent by a colleague without acknowledging it. Thirdly, a reply e-mail doesn"t have to be the same length as the original. We all have e-mail buddies who send long, chatty e-mails, which are nice to receive, but who then expect an equally long reply. Tough. The charm of e-mail can lie in the simple, suspended sentence, with total disregard for the formalities of the letter sent by post. You are perfectly within the bounds of politeness in responding to a marathon e-mail with a terse one-liner, like: "How distressing. I"m sure it will clear up."

单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.

单选题In Para. 1, Frank J. Scott's observation implies that nature ______.