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发表于 2017-8-6 14:19:29
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TEXT 2
Human migration: the term is vague. What people usually think of is the permanent movement of people from one home to another. More broadly, though, migration means all the ways—from the seasonal drift of agricultural workers within a country to the relocation of refugees from one country to another.
Migration is big, dangerous, compelling. It is 60 million Europeans leaving home from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Migration is the dynamic undertow of population change: everyone's solution, everyone's conflict. As the century turns, migration, with its inevitable economic and political turmoil, has been called “one of the greatest challenges of the coming century."
To demographer Kingsley Davis, two things made migration happen. First, human beings, with their tools and language, could adapt to different conditions without having to wait for evolution to make them suitable for a new niche. Second, as populations grew, cultures began to differ, and inequalities developed between groups. The first factor gave us the keys to the door of any room on the planet; the other gave us reasons to use them.
Over the centuries, as agriculture spread across the planet, people moved toward places where metal was found and worked and to centres of commerce that then became cities. Those places were, in turn, invaded and overrun by people later generations called barbarians.
In between these storm surges were steadier but similarly profound tides in which people moved out to colonize or were captured and brought in as slaves. For a while the population of Athens, that city of legendary enlightenment was as much as 35 percent slaves.
"What strikes me is how important migration is as a cause and effect in the great world events." Mark Miller, co-author of The Age of Migration and a professor of political science at the University of Delaware, told me recently.
It is difficult to think of any great events that did not involve migration. Religions spawned pilgrims or settlers; wars drove refugees before them and made new land available for the conquerors; political upheavals displaced thousands or millions; economic innovations drew workers and entrepreneurs like magnets; environmental disasters like famine or disease pushed their bedraggled survivors anywhere they could replant hope.
"It's part of our nature, this movement," Miller said, "It's just a fact of the human condition."
26. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT according to the first three passage
[A] Migration exerts a great impact on population change.
[B] Migration contributes to Mankind’s progress.
[C] Migration brings about desirable and undesirable effects.
[D] Migration may not be accompanied by human conflicts.
27. According to Kingsley Davis, migration occurs as a result of the following reasons EXCEPT .
[A] human adaptability
[B] human evolution
[C] cultural differences
[D] inter-group inequalities
28. Which of the following groups is NOT mentioned as migrants in the passage?
[A] Farmers.
[B] Workers.
[C] Settlers.
[D] Colonizers.
29. There seems to be a(n) relationship between great events and migration.
[A] loose
[B] indefinite
[C] causal
[D] remote
30. The author uses the example of Athens to show that .
[A] Athens was built mainly by slaves
[B] Athens enlightenment has nothing to do with slaves
[C] Slaves are too many at that time
[D] Migration never stopped even between big human conflicts
TEXT 3
Economies can get truly richer only through increased productivity growth, either from technological advances or from more efficient production thanks to international trade. Thus china's integration into the world economy genuinely creates wealth. The same cannot be said of all the "wealth"produced by stock market or housing bubbles.
In recent years, many people around the world have found it easier to make money from rising asset prices than from working. Roger Bootle, the managing director of Capital Economics, a London consultancy, calls this "money for nothing."The surge in share prices in the late 1900s boosted the shareholdings of American households by $7 trillion over four years, equivalent to almost two years' income from employment—without requiring any effort. The value of those shares has since fallen, but the drop has been more than offset by soaring house prices. Over the past four years the value of homes in America has increased by more than $5 trillion, making many Americans feel richer and less inclined to save. But much of this new wealth is an illusion.
The first mistake, at the end of the 1990s, was to believe that shares were actually worth their quoted price. The second mistake, today, is to view higher house prices as increased wealth. A rise in share prices can, in theory, reflect expected future gains in profits. The stock market boom did reflect some genuine wealth creation in the shape of productivity gains, however exaggerated they may have been. But rising house prices do not represent an increase in wealth for a country as a whole. They merely redistribute wealth to home-owners from non-home-owners who may hope to buy in the future. Nevertheless the illusion of new-found wealth has caused households as a whole to save less and spend and borrow more.
Historically low interest rates have fuelled housing bubbles in America and many other countries around the globe. At some stage prices will fall, obliging consumers to save much more and spend less. The unwinding of America's vast economic imbalances could depress growth there for many years, whereas China's slowdown looks likely to be fairly brief.
Oddly enough, China may be partly to blame for this wealth illusion in rich economies, because central bankers have been slow to grasp the consequences of China's rapid integration into the world economy. By producing goods more cheaply and so helping to hold down inflation and interest rates in rich economies, China may have indirectly encouraged excessive credit creation and asset-price bubbles there. Inflation has remained low, but excess liquidity now flows into the prices of houses and shares rather than the prices of goods and services. And to keep its exchange rate pegged to the dollar, China has been buying vast amounts of American Treasury bonds, which has helped to depress bond yields and mortgage rates, fuelling America's property boom.
31. The best title of this passage may be
[A] New methods of Wealth production
[B] China is to blame for economic bubbles
[C] Western economies are not as rich as they seem to be
[D] Different economic growth roads
32. In the author's mind, Roger Bootle’s point of view might be
[A] Strongly misleading
[B] A bit too sarcastic
[C] Totally unacceptable
[D] Nothing but truth
33. According to the author, the major difference between share price rising and house price rising is
[A] stock markets can witness some real wealth accumulation while house-price-rising cannot.
[B] stock markets have more bubbles.
[C] house-price-rising causes families to save less and to spend more.
[D] stock prices may go down but house prices seldom .
34. The word "brief" in the last line of the fourth paragraph may probably mean
[A] not important
[B] short in time
[C] significant
[D] unnecessary
35. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true
[A] Western central bankers are not well prepared for Chinese integration into the world economy.
[B] China has been buying large amount of real estates so that American property price booms.
[C] Since China exports products more cheaply, it will be a major factor to counteract inflation.
[D] There are also house-price bubbles in China.
TEXT 4
As humankind moves into the third millennium, it can rightfully claim to have broken new ground in its age-old quest to master the environment. The fantastic achievements of modern technology and the speed at which scientific discoveries are translated into technological applications attest to the triumph of human endeavour.
At the same time, however, some of these applications threaten to unleash forces over which we have no control. In other words, the new technology Man now believes allows him to dominate this wider cosmos could well be a Frankenstein monster waiting to turn on its master.
This is an entirely news situation that promises to change many of the perceptions governing life on the planet. The most acute challenges facing the future are likely to be not only those pitting man against his fellow man, but those involving humankind’s struggle to preserve the environment and ensure the sustainability of life on earth.
A conflict waged to ensure the survival of the human species is bound to bring humans closer together. Technological progress has thus proved to be a double-edged sword, giving rise to a new form of conflict: a clash between Man and Nature.
The new conflict is more dangerous than the traditional one between man and his fellow man, where the protagonists at least shared a common language. But when it comes to the reactions of the ecosystems to the onslaught of modern technology, there is no common language.
Nature reacts with weather disturbances, with storms and earthquakes, with storms and earthquakes, with mutant viruses and bacteria—that is, with phenomena having no apparent cause and effect relationship with the modern technology that supposedly triggers them.
As technology becomes ever more potent and Nature reacts ever more violently, there is an urgent need to rethink how best to deal with the growing contradictions between Man and Nature.
For a start, the planet, and hence all its inhabitants, must be perceived as an integral whole, not as a mass divided geographically into the rich and developed and the poor and underdeveloped.
Today, globalization encompasses the whole world and deals with it as an integral unit. It is no longer possible to say that conflict has shifted from its traditional east-west axis to a north-south axis. The real divide today is between summit and base, between state and civil society.
The mesh structure is particularly obvious on the Internet. While it is true that to date the Internet seems to be favouring the most developed sectors of the international community over the less developed, this need not always be the case. Indeed, it could eventually overcome the disparities between the privileged and the underdeveloped.
On the other hand, the macro-word in which we live is exposed to distortions because of the unpredictable side-effects of a micro-world we do not and cannot totally control.
This raises the need for a global system of checks and balances, for mandatory rules and constraints in our dealings with Nature, in short, for a news type of veto designed to manage what is increasingly becoming a main contradiction of our time: the one between technology and ecology.
A new type of international machinery must be set in place to cope with the new challenges. We need a new look at the harnessing of scientific discoveries, to maximize their positive effects for the promotion of humanity as a whole and to minimize their negative effects. We need an authority with veto powers to forbid practices conducive to decreasing the ozone hole, the propagation of AIDS, global warming, desertification—an authority that will tackle such global problems.
There should be no discontinuity in the global machinery responsible for world order. The UN in its present form may fall far short of what is required of it, and it may be undemocratic and detrimental to most citizens in the world, but its absence would be worse. And so we have to hold on to the international organization even as we push forward for its complete restructuring.
Our best hope would be that the functions of the present United Nations are gradually taken over by the new machinery of veto power representing genuine democratic globalization.
36. The mention of Man's victory over Nature at the beginning of the passage is to highlight .
[A] a new creative powers
[B] Man's creative powers
[C] The role of modern technology
[D] Man's ground-breaking work
37. According to the author, the current conflict is more dangerous as
[A] nature will punish human beings more severely.
[B] man and nature cannot share the same communicative channel.
[C] technological advances are to be a double-edged sword.
[D] Human beings cannot unite together.
38. According to the passage, which is NOT a responsibility of the proposed new international authority?
[A] Monitoring effects of scientific discoveries.
[B] Dealing with worldwide environmental issues.
[C] Vetoing human attempts to conquer Nature.
[D] Authorizing efforts to improve human health.
39. When commenting on the present role of the UN, the author expresses his .
[A] dissatisfaction
[B] disillusionment
[C] objection
[D] doubt
40. The best title of this text may probably be
[A] Man and Nature: The Everlasting Conflict
[B] Mankind in the New Millennium
[C] UN Must Be Reformed
[D] New Approaches on Man-Nature Conflict: a More Powerful Global Organization
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