Though it is mere 1 to 3 percent of the population...

第1题

The Now Rich and the Old Rich Though it is mere 1 to 3 percent of the population, the uppe

The Now Rich and the Old Rich

Though it is mere 1 to 3 percent of the population, the upper class possesses at least 25 percent of the nation’s wealth. This class has two segments: upper-upper and lower-upper. Basically, the upper-upper class is the “old rich”—families that have been wealthy for several generations and aristocracy of birth and wealth. Their names are in the Social Register, a listing of acceptable members of high society. A few are known across the nation, such as the Rockfellers, Roosevelts, and Vanderbilts. Most are not visible to the general public. They live in grand seclusion (深居简出), drawing their income from the investment of their inherited wealth. In contrast, the lower upper class is the “new rich”. Although they may he wealthier than some of the old rich, the new rich have hustled(急于做)to make their money like everybody else beneath their class. Thus their prestige is generally lower than that of the old rich, who have not found it necessary to lift a finger to make their money, and who tend to look down upon the new rich.

However its wealth is acquired, the upper class is very, very rich. They have enough money and leisure time to cultivate an interest in the arts and to collect rare books, painting, and sculpture. They generally live in exclusive areas, belong to exclusive social clubs, communicate with each other, and marry their own kind — all of which keeps them so distant from the masses that they have been called the out-of-sight class. They also command an enormous amount of power and influence here and abroad, as they hold many top government positions, run the Council on foreign relations, and control multinational corporations. Their actions affect the lives of millions.

All the following statements are true except that______.

A．the upper-upper class is of aristocratic origin

B．the “old rich” enjoy higher prestige than the “new rich”

C．the “old rich” isolate themselves and lead a lonely life

D．the upper class owns at least a quarter of the country’s wealth

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第2题

No species has developed a closer relationship with humanity than the dog, though cat-love

rs may disagree. But that relationships basis — what it is about dogs that allows them to live【C1】______ with people — is still【C2】______ understood. After all, dogs are【C3】______ from wolves, which are big, scary carnivores that would certainly have【C4】______ with early man for prey, and【C5】______ have been averse to the occasional human as a light snack. 【C6】______ specifically bred for fighting, dogs are more docile than wolves, so that is【C7】______ part of the answer. But mere docility cannot【C8】______ for why people like to have dogs in their homes. Sheep are【C9】______, but few people keep them as pets. Brian Hare, of Harvard University, thinks he knows. And, as he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle, it does not【C10】______ well on the intelligence of mankinds closest living【C11】______, the chimpanzee. Dr. Hares hypothesis is that dogs are superbly【C12】______ to social cues from people. That【C13】______ them to fit in with human society. On one【C14】______, this might sound common sense. But humans are such【C15】______ animals that they frequently【C16】______ to realize just how unusual are their own【C17】______ at communicating. Dr. Hare【C18】______ decided to test his idea by【C19】______ the abilities of dogs with those of chimpanzees,【C20】______ are often regarded as second only to people in their level of innate intelligence.

【C1】

A．at present

B．at difference

C．at ease

D．at distance

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第3题

By saying "the conclusions to be drawn am obvious" （line 1, Paragraph 4), the writer means

By saying "the conclusions to be drawn am obvious" (line 1, Paragraph 4), the writer means that______.

A．women's inconstancy in their choice of clothing is often laughed at

B．women am better able to put up with discomfort

C．men are also exploited greatly by fashion designers

D．men are mere reasonable in the matter of fashion

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第4题

It can never be proved, but it is a safe assumption that the first time five thousand ma

le human beings were ever gathered together in one place, they belonged to an army. That event probably occurred around 7000 BC, and it is an equally unsafe bet that the first truly【M1】______ large-scale slaughter of the people in human history happened very soon afterward. The first army almost certainly carried weapons no different from those hunters had been using on animals and on each other for【M2】______ thousands of years previously—spears, axes, bows and arrows. Its strength did not lie on mere numbers; what made it an army was【M3】______ discipline and organization. This multitude of men obeyed a single commander and killed their enemies to achieve his goals. It was the【M4】______ most awe concentration of power the human world had ever seen,【M5】______ and nothing besides another army could hope to resist it.【M6】______ The battle that occurred when two such armies fought has little【M7】______ in common with the clashes of primitive warfare. Thousands of men were crowded together in tight formations that moved on command and marched in step. Drill, practiced over many days and months until it became automatic, is that transformed these men from a mob of【M8】______ individual fighters into an army. And when the packed formations of well-drilled men had【M9】______ collided on the forgotten battlefields of earliest kingdoms, what【M10】______ happened was quite impersonal, though every man died his own death. It was not the traditional combat between individual warriors.

【M1】

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第5题

Section BDirections: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by som

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.

Though it is mere 1 to 3 percent of the population, the upper class possesses at least 25 percent of the nation's wealth. This class has two segments: upper-upper and lower-upper. Basically, the upper-upper class is the " old rich" —families that have been wealthy for several generations and aristocracy (贵州阶级)of birth and wealth. Their names are in the Social Register, a listing of acceptable members of high society. A few are known across the nation, such as the Rockfellers, Roosevelts, and Vanderbilts. Most are not visible to the general public. They live in grand seclusion (深居简出), drawing their income from the investment of their inherited wealth. In contrast, the lower upper-class is the "new rich". Although they may be wealthier than some of the old rich, the new rich have hustled (急于做)to make their money like everybody else beneath their class. Thus their prestige is generally lower than that of the old rich, who have not found it necessary to lift a finger to make their money, and who tend to look down upon the new rich.

However its wealth is acquired, the upper class is very, very rich. They have enough money and leisure time to cultivate an interest in the arts and to collect rare books, painting, and sculpture. They generally live in exclusive areas, belong to exclusive social clubs, communicate with each other, and marry their own kind—all of which keeps them so distant from the masses that they have been called the out-of-sight class. More than any other class, they tend to be conscious of being members of a class. They also command an enormous amount of power and influence here and abroad, as they hold many top government positions, run the Council on Foreign Relations, and control multinational corporations. Their actions affect the lives of millions.

According to the passage, which of the following statements is not true？

A．The upper-upper class is of aristocratic origin.

B．The "old rich" enjoy higher prestige than the "new rich".

C．The "old rich" isolate themselves and lead a lonely life.

D．The upper class owns at least a quarter of the country's wealth.

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第6题

Another month, another dismal set of job figures. America pulled out of its last economic

recession way back in November 2001, yet the country's "jobs recession" finished only last autumn, when 2.7 million jobs had been lost since the start of the slowdown. Now, though economic growth has bounced back, new jobs refuse to do the same in this, the third year of recovery. In February, a mere 21,000 jobs were created, according to the official payroll survey, at a time when George Bush's economists forecast 2.6 million new jobs for 2004 mounting alarm at the White House, and increased calls for protection against what a growing number of Americans see as the root of most ills: the "outsourcing" of jobs to places like China and India. Last week the Senate approved a bill that forbids the outsourcing of government contracts--a curious case of a government guaranteeing not to deliver value-for-money to taxpayers. American anxiety over the economy appears to have tipped over into paranoia and self-delusion.

Too strong？ Not really. As The Economist has recently argued--though in the face of many angry readers--the jobs lost are mainly a cyclical affair, not a structural one. They must also be set against the 24 million new jobs created during the 1990s. Certainly, the slow pace of job-creation today is without precedent, but so were the conditions that conspired to slow a booming economy at the beginning of the decade. A stock market bubble burst, and rampant business investment slumped. Then, when the economy was down, terrorist attacks were followed by a spate of scandals that undermined public trust in the way companies were run. These acted as powerful headwinds and, in the face of them, the last recession was remarkably mild. By the same token, the recovery is mild, too. Still, in the next year or so, today's high productivity growth will start to translate into more jobs. Whether that is in time for Mr. Bush is another matter.

As for outsourcing, it is implausible now, as Lawrence Katz at Harvard University argues, to think that outsourcing has profoundly changed the structure of the American economy over just the past three or four years. After all, outsourcing was in full swing--both in manufacturing and in services--throughout the job-creating 1990s. Government statisticians reckon that outsourced jobs are responsible for well under 1% of those signed up as unemployed. And the jobs lost to outsourcing pale in comparison with the number of jobs lost and created each month at home.

It seems that in the eyes of many Americans their unemployment is caused by ______.

A．the economic recession in November 2001

B．the forecasts of George Bush's economists

C．the flow of job chances into developing countries

D．the rich natural resources in China and India

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第7题

Taste is such a subjective matter that we don' t usually conduct preference tests for food

. The most you can say about anyone' s is that it' s one person' s opinion. But because the two big cola companies -- CocaCola and Pepsi Cola --are marketed so aggressively, we're wondered how big a role taste preference actually plays in brand loyalty. We set up a taste test that challenged people who identified themselves as either CocaCola Or Pepsi fans: Find your brand in a blind tasting.

We invited staff volunteers who had a strong liking for either C0caCola Classic or Pepsi, Diet Coke, or Diet Pepsi. These were people who thought they' d have no trouble telling their brand from the other brand.

We eventually located 19 regular cola drinkers and 27 diet cola drinkers. Then we fed them four unidentified samples of cola one at a time, regular colas for the one group, diet versions for the other. We asked them to tell us whether each sample was Coke or Pepsi; then we analyzed the records statistically to compare the participants' choices with what mere guesswork could have accomplished.

Getting ail four samples right was a tough test, but not too though, for people who believed they could recognize their brand. In the end, only 7 out of 19 regular cola drinkers correctly identified theft brand of choice in all four trials. The diet cola drinkers did a little worse -- only 7 out of 27 identified all four samples correctly.

While both groups did better than chance would predict, nearly half the participants in each group made the wrong choice two or more times. Two people got all four samples wrong. Overall, half the participants did about as well on the last round of tasting as on the first, so fatigue, or taste burnout, was not a factor. Our preference test results suggest that only a few Pepsi participants and Coke fans may really be able to tell their favorite brand by taste and price.

According to the passage the preference test was conducted in order to______.

A．find out the role taste preference plays in a person' s drinking

B．reveal which cola is more to the liking of the drinkers

C．show that a person' s opinion about taste is mere guesswork

D．compare the ability of the participants in choosing their drinks

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第8题

If books had never been discovered, man would have found some other way of recording his c

ommunication. But then, for our consideration, we should include as books everything that is a written record. This would include tablets, papyrus and anything else—including computer diskettes. In the case of music, it would be impossible to think that man can live without it. Looking at primitive cultures, it appears that music is actually a part of the human psyche. When two things are knocked together, music is produced. So for the sake of our discussion, it is intended to restrict the meaning of music to the popularly accepted concept. Music is the pleasing combination of sounds that we like to listen to.

Though it is difficult to, we can pretend that these things never existed. In this case we would not miss them today. To compare with recent inventions, let. us look at radio and television. Though we cannot think of life without them today, this is so only from comparatively recent times. There are many of us living today who had seen a time when there was no television. They will tell us that life was not that much different. The same is probably true of radio. But books are a different thing because they, or something akin to them, began thousands of years ago. In the case of music, it goes back even further—perhaps to millions of years. We may be able to imagine a world which never saw books, because books are a human invention. However, in the case' of music this does not seem possible. Pleasing sounds are all around us; like the singing of the birds and the whistling of the wind. Music just seems to be inborn in US and in the world around us.

If books did not exist, the world will be a poorer place indeed. Great philosophies like Plato's would become unknown and all the pleasures and lessons we could get from them will be lost forever. Then there is literature like the works of the great masters like Shakespeare, Dickens and Jane Austen. What a somber, miserable world it will be without the pleasures of reading. Since mere are so many other things which depend on reading-like plays, songs and movies—we can expect them to disappear also. It would be a dark and unsatisfying world where knowledge is not propagated; where there ale no books to derive pleasure from.

In the case of music: Without it the world will be bleak and cold indeed. It would be a terrible world with no cheery runes, no songs to sing and no great music to lose ourselves in. A world which does not listen to the music of the great masters like Chopin and Beethoven would be a very sorry world. There will not be so many smiles on faces anymore. When we lose music. an expression of a deep part of ourselves—from the soul—is lost. With music, connected activities like dancing will be lost too. A world without music and dancing will bring US back to the Stone Age.

Unlike radio, television, telephones and computers, reading and music ale not mere conveniences that we can live without. Reading is crucial for self-expression and for passing on records and knowledge to future generations. Music is part of our very soul. A world without these will not be the world as we know it. In fact. many of us would not want to live in such a world.

Music is part of the human psyche because ______.

A．it is part of primitive culture

B．it is something we like to listen to

C．it always strikes a chord with us

D．it has been produced since ancient times

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第9题

Women, according to Chairman Mao, hold up half the sky—but in California some are better r

ewarded for this effort than others. According to a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California, Asian women born in the United States outstrip all their sisters in terms of earning power.

The average hourly wage for American-born Asian ladies in 2001(the latest year with reliable figures) was $19.30, with American-born whites coming next. On the bottom rungs of the ladder came Latinas: if born abroad, they earned a mere $10.40 an hour (though this was comfortably above California's then $6.25 minimum wage); if born in America, they managed $15.10 an hour.

Education is the biggest reason for the ethnic disparities. Some 55% of California's American-born Asian women have at least a bachelor's degree, and an impressive 84% of them either have jobs or are looking for them. By contrast, only 14% of American-born Hispanic women have a bachelor's degree and only 74% of them are in the labour market. Meanwhile, Latinas born abroad are often condemned to low-paying jobs by an even inefficient education or a poor knowledge of English. Much the same can be said of Asian women born in South-East Asia, a category that includes refugees from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The institute calculates that they earned an average of $15.80, almost $1 less than other foreign-born Asians.

But education is not the only factor in play for California's women. Larger families make it more difficult for Latinas to go out to work in the first place; blacks often live too far away to commute to well-paid jobs; and just as Asians may benefit from high expectations, so other groups may suffer from low ones.

The institute makes an attempt, heroic or politically correct, to adjust for such factors, imagining, for example, that a foreign-born Latina has the same family structure, education and place of residence as the average Californian woman. That brings the average wage for foreign-born Latinas up to a more respectable $15.20; yet American-born Asians still rule the roost. But before the golden girls get too happy, the institute reckons that Californian women of all sorts tend to earn roughly 20% less than their menfolk do.

What can be inferred from "...in California some are better rewarded for this effort than others"？

A．Some women in California earn more than men.

B．Some women in California earn more than women in other places.

C．Some women in California earn more than other people.

D．Some women in California earn more than ordinary people.

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