单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.
单选题It isn't ______ wearing winter clothes yet. A. cold to start B. cold for starting C. enough cold to start D. cold enough to start
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单选题Questions 27-30
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单选题 Like many people, I've always seen the Olympics as
the "main" sporting event held every four years—the headline act—and the
Paralyrnpics as something of an "add-on"—the supporting act. It you are not
disabled yourself it is hard to understand some of the games and the athletes
mobility problems. But being in the host city for these
Paralympics changed my perspective. I came to realize these athletes were
nothing short of superheroes. Deprived of physical abilities that able-bodied
people take for granted, they made up for them and then some. They tested their
senses and the boundaries of physical ability to extremes that the Bolts and
Phelpses of this world would never have to. If some Olympic
runners had to undergo a double-amputation, I wonder if they would strap two
carbon fiber blades to their knees like Oscar Pistorius, also known as Blade
Runner, of South Africa, and relearn everything that once came
naturally. If some Olympic swimming heroes suddenly went blind,
would they have the courage to still surge through the water like Donovan
Tildesley, not knowing when they would reach the end of the pool? Would any of
us have the guts to turn around a life-changing experience like a car crash or
bad rugby scrum. And not only get our lives back on track but then strive to be
the best at a sport? "What Paralympic sport would you do if you
were disabled?" was a water-cooler question I posed today. It's not something
you would normally think about. You don't watch TV as a kid aspiring to be a
Paralympian. But it takes more than early mornings, training programs and
special diets to get to the Paralympics. It takes a tragedy or loss that will
have been grieved over, worked through and overcome. Skiing is
terrifying enough if you have all your faculties. Standing at the top of a ski
slope, it's a battle of wills for most people to launch themselves, but Canada's
Donovan Tildesley, who has been blind from birth, revealed to a China Daily
reporter that not only did he already ski, but he also wanted to take it up
competitively. Superheroes indeed, each and every one. The
Paralympics should be renamed the "Superlympics". It's nothing to do with the
equality denoted by the Greek "para", it's about "super" ability, courage and
strength that most of us, the top able-bodied athletes of the world included,
will never have to muster. It's worth remembering that many
Paralympians suffered horrific injuries while living life to the full. You don't
get paralyzed sitting at home playing video games. And having lived life to the
full they are not prepared to stop. That's the lesser talked about "Paralympic
spirit". I only hope that if life dealt me or my loved ones
similar blows we would tackle them in the same way as these outstanding men and
women.
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单选题There are many shops in Singapore where customers still bargain, although prices are clearly shown on the goods. There is nothing out of the ordinary in haggling; some shopkeepers expect you to and will be surprised if you accept their prices immediately. We know that the prices in some stores are a bit higher than those in Change Alley, but we also realize that to keep a store like Robinson's is by no means cheap. Besides, in such places we shop in air-conditioned (空调) com-fort. For all these, we pay a little extra. It is not always true to say that things in Change Alley cost less. I once bought a Czechoslo-vakian glass butter-dish from Robinson's for a little under two dollars. I then went on to Change Al-ley and just by chance saw an article of the same shape, design and size, in one of the shops. I then asked about its price, and was surprised when the man demanded more than four dollars for it. "How much can you offer?" he shouted at me. I offered him exactly the same price I paid for the article and his reply was shockingly rude (粗鲁). I opened my bag, showed him my receipt, stared at him and walked out of his shop. A buyer in England expects to find the price of goods clearly shown, or, to be told exactly what the price is. He knows this is the lowest price that will be accepted. If he thinks the price is be- yond what he can afford, he shrugs (耸耸) his shoulders and walks away. He does not attempt to bargain with the shopkeeper. Even if he showed annoyance or surprise, he would expect to be told that if the price was unacceptable, he should try elsewhere.
单选题For more than fifty years we have known, or could have known, that there is an unconscious to counterbalance consciousness. Medical psychology has furnished all the necessary empirical and experimental proofs of an unconscious psychic reality which demonstrably influences consciousness and behavior. All this is known, but no practical conclusions have been drawn from it. We still go on thinking and acting as if we were simplex and not duplex. Accordingly, we imagine ourselves to be innocuous, reasonable, and human. We do not think of distrusting our motives, or of asking ourselves how the inner man feels about the things we do in the outside world, but actually it is frivolous, superficial, and unreasonable of us, as well as psychically unhygienic, to overlook the reaction and viewpoint of the unconscious.
One can regard one"s stomach or heart as unimportant or even worthy of contempt, but nevertheless overeating and overexertion have consequences which affect the whole man. Yet we think that psychic mistakes and their consequences can be erased by mere words, for "psychic" means less than air to most people. All the same, nobody can deny that without the psyche there would be no world at all and still less a human world. Virtually everything depends on human soul and its functions. It is worthy of all the attention we can give it, especially today when everyone admits that the weal or woe of the future will be decided not by attacks of wild animals, by natural catastrophes, or by the danger of world-wide epidemics but rather by the psychic changes in man.
Only an almost imperceptible disturbance of equilibrium in a few of our rulers" heads could plunge the world into blood, fire, and radioactivity. The technical means to this destruction are available to both sides. And certain conscious deliberations, uncontrolled by an inner opponent, can be all too easily indulged, as we have already seen from the example of one "leader". The consciousness of modern man still clings so much to outward objects that he believes them exclusively responsible, as if it were on them that decisions depended. That the psychic state of certain individuals could emancipate itself for once from the behavior of objects is something that is considered far too little, although irrationalities of this sort are observed every day and can happen to everyone.
单选题Once upon a time, in the "dominion of new haven", it was illegal to kiss your children on Sunday. Or make a bed or cut your hair or eat mince pies or cross a river unless you were a clergyman riding your circuit. If you lived in Connecticut in 1650, there was no mistaking Sunday for just another shopping day; regardless of whether you"d go to hell for breaking the Sabbath, you could certainly go to jail. Centuries later, the sense that Sunday is special is still wired in us, a miniature sabbatical during which to peel off the rest of the week and savor ritual, religious or otherwise. Sunday worship, Sunday football, Sunday papers, Sunday brunch, the day you call your mother, the night the family gathers around the TV to watch, once upon a time,
The Wonderful World of Disney
and, now The Sim psons.
The idea that rest is a right has deep roots in our history. Blue laws were a gift as much as a duty, a command to relax and reflect. That tension, explains Sunday historian Alexis McCrossen, has always been less between sacred and secular than between work and respite; America does not readily sit still, even for a day. The Civil War and a demand for news begat the Sunday paper; industrialization inspired progressives to argue that libraries and museums should open on Sundays so working people could elevate themselves. Major league baseball held its first Sunday game in 1892. Joseph Pulitzer realized the Sunday paper was less about news than about fun, comics and book reviews, and soon the theaters, amusement parks and fairs were open too.
Over time, Sunday has gone from a day we could do only a very few things to the only day we can do just about anything we want. The U.S. is too diverse, our lives too busy, our economy too global and our appetites too vast to lose a whole day that could be spent working or playing or power shopping. Pulled between piety and profit, even Christian bookstores are open. Children come to Sunday school dressed in their soccer uniforms; some churches have started their own leagues just to control the schedule. Politicians recite their liturgies in TV studios. Post offices may still be closed, but once you miss that first Sunday e-mail from the boss, it becomes forever harder not to log on and check in. Even the casinos are open.
If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan, Albert Schweitzer said—which raises a question for our times. What do we lose if Sunday becomes just like any other day? Lawmakers in Virginia got to spend part of their summer break debating that question, thanks to a mistake they made last winter when they inadvertently revived a "day of rest" rule; hotels and hospitals and nuclear power plants would have had to give workers a weekend day off or be fined $500. After a special legislative session was convened to fix the error, Virginia"s workers, like the rest of us, are once more potentially on call 24/7. Meanwhile, Rhode Island just became the 32nd state to let liquor stores open every Sunday; until this month, they could do so only in December, perhaps because even George Washington"s eggnog recipe called for brandy, whiskey and rum. Social conservatives may want to honor the Fourth Commandment, but businesses want the income, states need the tax revenues, and busy families want the flexibility.
With progress, of course, comes backlash from those who desperately want to preserve the old ways. Morn-and-pop liquor stores in New York fought to keep the blue laws to have more time with their families. Car dealers in Kansas City pushed for a law to make them close on Sundays so they could have a day off without losing out to competition. Chick-Fil-A, a chain of more than 1,100 restaurants in 37 states, closes on Sundays because its founder, Truett Cathy, promised employees time to "worship, spend time with family and friends or just plain rest from the work week," says the chain"s website. "Made sense then, still makes sense now." Pope John Paul Ⅱ even wrote an apostolic letter in defense of Sunday.. "When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a "weekend"," he wrote, "people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see "the heavens"."
In an age with no free time, we buy it through hard choices. Do we skip church so we can sleep in or skip soccer so we can go to church or find a family ritual—cook together, read together—that we treat as sacred? That way, at least some part of Sunday faces in a different direction, whether toward heaven or toward one another.
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单选题Businesses put lots of time and money into new plans, programs and excellent employees with the hope things will change. Yet, at the end of the effort, not much changes. What happens? In most cases, those new plans, programs and employees enter a company with an existing culture(文化). And plans, programs and new employees have a way of conforming to(顺应) the existing culture. The culture of your business is the result of a particular mindset, or a particular way of thinking and the general feelings about certain things. Most often, it is the mindset of the founder or people managing the business. The founder has gotten to where he is because of his skill sets, knowledge base and personal beliefs, which unfortunately all come with inherent (固有的) limits. Why? Skills, knowledge and beliefs come from what he or she already knows or has experienced. In other words, it comes from the past. We (people) try to make the past fit the future. Just because something worked in the past, doesn't mean it is suitable for the future. As the saying goes, if you do and think what you have always done and thought, you will have what you have always had. Therefore, lasting changes have to start with the way people think. To make changes in the way you think, you will be required to set goals beyond your basic abilities and continuously think them through. It is a way to train yourself and people to get out of the comfort zone where you feel happy with your knowledge and skills.
单选题A.TradeisstillflourishinginEnglandvillages.B.Englandvillagesaboundinfrozenfoodandantiques.C.Asuperficialtravelerturnsouttobetoocritical.D.Asuperficialtravelerfavorsflourishingtrade.
单选题Questions 15-18
单选题The British author Salman Rushdie is selling his personal archive to a wealthy American university. The archive, which includes personal diaries written during the decade that he spent living in hiding from Islamic extremists, is being bought by the Emory University in Atlanta for an undisclosed sum. The move has sparked concern that Britain's literary heritage is being lost to foreign buyers. The archive also includes two unpublished novels. Rushdie, 59, said last week that his priority had been to "find a good home" for his papers, but admitted that money had also been a factor. "I don't see why I should give them away," he said. "It seemed to me quite reasonable that one should be paid." The sum involved is likely to match or exceed similar deals. In 2003 Emory bought the archive of Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, for a reported $ 600,000. Julian Barnes, the author of Flaubert's Parrot, is said to have sold his papers to the University of Texas at Austin for $200,000. Rushdie was born in Bombay (Mumbai) but educated in Britain. His book Midnight's Children was voted the best Booker prize winner in 25 years and he is regarded as a leading British literary novelist. The sale of his papers will annoy the British Library, which is about to hold a conference to discuss how to stop famous writers' archives being sold abroad. Yesterday Clive Field, the director of scholarship and collections at the library, said: "I am pleased that Rushdie's papers will be preserved in a publicly accessible institution, but disappointed that we didn't have an opportunity to discuss the acquisition of the archive with him." Rushdie' said the British Library "never asked me about the archive". Emory University enjoys a large endowment thanks to a student who became a senior executive at Coca-Cola, and already holds the archives of the poets W B Yeats and Seamus Heaney, as well as Hughes. "Emory seems to be very serious about building a collection of contemporary literature," said Rushdie. "Not only do they have the papers of Hughes and Heaney, but also Paul Muldoon and other writers. I got the sense that they want to collect contemporary novelists as well and it just felt very good to be part of that. " Rushdie, who now lives in New York, has accepted a position as a visiting fellow and will spend a month on the campus in Decatur, a leafy suburb of Atlanta, every year until 2012. "They asked if I'd ever thought about putting my archive anywhere and, to tell you the truth, until that moment I really hadn't," Rushdie said. "My archive is so voluminous that I don't have room in my house for it and it's in an outside storage facility. I was worried about that and wanted to feel it was in a safe place. " The papers will be open for scholars to study with one key exception, the "fatwa" diaries that Rushdie wrote under threat of death from Islamic extremists for writing The Satanic Verses. He spent a decade in hiding under the protection of Scotland Yard after Ayatollah Khomeini, then leader of Iran, called the book "blasphemous against Islam" in 1989. The author may use the diaries as the basis for a book. "I wouldn't want them out in the open, I want to be the first person to have a go at the material, whether as a serious autobiography or as a memoir. " He was ambivalent about the idea of scholars studying his papers. "The whole thing is very bizarre, you know, it's like imagining someone going through your underwear. " The two unpublished novels—The Antagonist, influenced by Thomas Pynchon, the American writer, and The Book of Peer—were written by Rushdie in the 1970s. "The Antagonist was a contemporary London novel, set around Ladbroke Grove where I was living at the time. I think it was embarrassingly Pynchonesque. "Chris Smith, the former culture minister who chairs the UK Literary Heritage Working Group, said: "It is a very sad day for British literature and scholarship. Our literary heritage is arguably our greatest contribution to culture and we should be taking special care to protect that." Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, last week called for the government to remove Vat from unbound papers, which increases the cost of purchases in this country. Stephen Enniss, of Emory University, said: "There is worldwide interest in Rushdie. We are catering for the long-term care of the archive and will welcome scholars from all over the world. /
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What will future historians remember
about the impact of science during the last decade of the 20th century? They
will not be much concerned with many of the marvels that currently preoccupy us,
such as the miraculous increase in the power of home computers and the
unexpected growth of the Internet. Nor will they dwell much on global warming,
the loss of biodiversity and other examples of our penchant for destruction.
Instead, the end of 20th century will be recognized as the time when, for better
or worse, science began to bring about a fundamental shift in our perception of
ourselves. It will be the third time that science has forced us
to re-evaluate who we are. The first time, of course, was the revolution that
began with Copernicus in 1543 and continued with Kepler, Galileo and Newton.
Despite the Church's opposition, we came to realize that the Earth does not lie
at the centre of the universe. Instead we gradually found we live on a small
planet on the edge of a minor galaxy, circling one star in a universe that
contains billion of others. Our unique position in the universe was gone for
ever. A few centuries later we were moved even further from
stage centre. The Darwinian revolution removed us from our position as a unique
creation of God. Instead we discovered we were just another part of the animal
kingdom proud to have "a miserable ape for a grandfather", as Thomas Huxley put
it in 1850. We know now just how close to the apes we are—over 90% of our genes
are the same of those of the chimpanzee. Increasing knowledge of
our own genetics is one of the driving forces in the third great conceptual
shift that will soon take place. Others are the growing knowledge of the way our
minds work, our new ability to use knowledge of the nervous system to design
drugs that affect specific states of mind and the creation of sophisticated
scanners which enable us to see what is happening inside our brains. In the
third revolution we are taking our own selves to pieces and finding the parts
which make up the machine that is us. Much of the new knowledge
from genetics, molecular biology and the neurosciences is esoteric. But its
cultural impact is already running ahead of science. People begin to see
themselves not as wholes with a moral centre but the result of the combined
action of parts for which they have little responsibility. It's
Nobody's Fault is the title of a popular American book on "difficult" children.
Many different children, the book explains, are not actually difficult but are
suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). There is nothing wrong with
them or the way they have been brought up. Rather, the part of the brain which
controls attention is short of a particular neurotransmitter.
You might, as many people do, question the way in which the disorder has
been diagnosed on such a staggering scale. But that is not the point. The
cultural shift is that people are not responsible for their disorders, only for
obtaining treatment for the parts of them that have gone wrong.
Even when a treatment is not to hand, the notion that we are made of
"clusters of functions" remains strong. Genetic analysis supports this view. A
gene linked to alcoholism has been located and a Gallup poll has revealed that
the great majority of Americans consider alcoholism to be a disease There are
claims of genes too for obesity, homosexuality and even for laziness.
Some claims about genes may be silly. Or you may think that the current
conceptual shift is just a re-run of old arguments about the relative roles of
nature and nurture. Instead, take one drug, Viagra, as an example of the new way
of thinking about ourselves. If you suffer from impotence, it might have a
variety of physiological causes. Or you might just be anxious about sexual
performance. But Viagra does not make such fine distinctions: it acts at the
level of the chemical reactions that control the blood flow needed to maintain
an erection. The more direct means we have of changing who we
are, through changing the parts that we are composed of, the harder becomes the
question of who was the person who made the decision to change, before becoming
someone else. This will be the real issue for the 21st century: who are we, if
we are the sum of our parts and science has given us the power to change those
parts?
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Drivers on the Basingstoke by-pass used
to have their attention diverted by a sign that reads A MOMENT'S INATTENTION
CAUSES ACCIDENTS. This self-defeating warning has now been removed, but its
message is still very much to the point. Almost anything can
cause an accident. Apart from momentary inattention, it might be a minor
miscalculation, a sudden fit of coughing, a bop on the head with a teddy-bear
from a child in the back seat, an argument with the wife, fog, falling asleep at
the wheel, bad eyesight, a glaring sun, ice, rain, wind, or snow-all these can
make the difference between a tragic hit and a lucky miss.
Although human error plays its part, it is by no means the only cause of
accidents. There must be some cause other than simple human error. Road
construction plays its part: researchers have found that it is not at the
obvious danger spot- sharp corners, cross-roads, narrow lanes — that accidents
happen. It is on those roads where there are subtle visual traps, unexpected
changes in the shape or surface of the road, or even insufficient or
badly-placed signs. Wherever there is a "black spot", it means that something is
seriously wrong with the road. Why else did the careless driving of so many come
out at that particular spot? What the law requires when you have
an accident. There are, firstly the legal formalities of
exchanging names and addresses with others involved in an accident and, in
Certain cases, informing the police. However, you are required by law to stop
after an accident only if. 1. Somebody other than yourself in or
outside your car has been injured. 2. A vehicle not of your own
has been damaged. 3. Any horse, cow, donkey, sheep, or
dog has been injured. It has been said that if a driver
continues unaware of causing injury he must be acquitted. But the courts are
wary of that excuse. Furthermore, the driver himself must wait at the scene; it
is not enough for him to leave his chauffeur or a friend to attend to the boring
formalities while he goes off on more important business. If you
have been involved in an accident and have stopped, you must give your name,
address, and registration number to anyone who has a good reason for requesting
it; this means anyone affected by the accident. If these formalities which are
complied with it is not necessary to wait for the arrival of the police. It is,
however, often wise to do so. The police are experts at drawing plans, taking
measurements and photographs and gathering other evidence. In your absence the
police could be given a biased story against you; and you yourself might warn to
point out certain features of the accident to the
police.
