It all began with a stop at a red light.
Kevin Salwen was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006 . While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes Coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.”Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered （纠缠）her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.
“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”
Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.
Eventually, that’s what the family did. The project —crazy, impetuous（鲁莽的）and utterly inspiring — is written down in detail in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month: “The Power of Half.” It’s a book that, frankly, I’d be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it. An impressionable child reads this, and the next thing you know your whole family is out on the street.
At a time of enormous needs in Haiti and elsewhere, when so many Americans are trying to help Haitians by sending everything from text messages to shoes, the Salwens offer an example of a family that came together to make a difference — for themselves as much as the people they were trying to help. In a column a week ago, it described neurological evidence from brain scans that unselfishness lights up parts of the brain normally associated with more primary satisfaction. The Salwens’ experience confirms the selfish pleasures of selflessness.
Mr. Salwen and his wife, Joan, had always assumed that their kids would be better off in a bigger house. But after they downsized, there was much less space to retreat to, so the family members spent more time around each other. A smaller house unexpectedly turned out to be a more family-friendly house.The best title for the passage should be “______”.
| A．The Less, the Better |
| B．An Expected Satisfaction |
| C．Something We Can Live Without |
| D．Somewhat Crazy but Inspiring |
What does the underlined word “inequity” most probably mean in Paragraph 3?
| A．Unfairness. | B．Satisfaction. |
| C．Personal attitude. | D．Reasonable statement. |
What does the underlined sentence “Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager.” mean? ______
| A．Never give a quick answer to an idealistic teenager. |
| B．Unless a child is realistic, never give an answer immediately. |
| C．Give an answer if the child is reasonable. |
| D．Don’t respond to a child's demands firmly without consideration. |
What can we learn from the last paragraph?
| A．The Salwens regretted selling their house. |
| B．The relationship between the family members of the Salwens is much closer. |
| C．Small houses can bring happiness. |
| D．The Salwens intend to buy another big house. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Mercedes Coupe is only an ordinary car which is quite cheap. |
| B．Unselfishness has nothing to do with people’s primary satisfaction. |
| C．Hannah asked her parents to do something charitable and they sold their house. |
| D．The writer’s children asked him to sell their house. |
Early one morning the subinspector at a station at the other end of the town rang me. An elephant was damaging the town. Would I please come and do something about it?
I did not know what I could do, but I got onto a horse and started out. I took my gun, maybe too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might scare him. Various local people stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings.
It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one. It had been chained up but last night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its owner, had set out to run after it, but had taken the wrong direction. He was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly appeared in the town. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut (棚屋), killed a cow and turned over fruitstalls.
I came round the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and grounded him into the earth. This was the rainy season and he was lying on his stomach in the soft mud, the__peacebreaker standing beside, looking innocent.
As I lifted my gun, I hesitated a few seconds. Then I fired. That was a shot that did for him.
You could see the pain of it knock the last strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, with a crash that shook the ground.Which of the following statements about the author is TRUE?
| A．He was an Indian. |
| B．He knew elephants well. |
| C．He was not a local villager. |
| D．He was the owner of the elephant. |
The elephant made so much trouble because ________.
| A．its owner treated him cruelly |
| B．it got out of control |
| C．it hated the village people |
| D．it was a wild elephant |
The underlined words “the peacebreaker” in Paragraph 4 refer to ________.
| A．the elephant | B．the dead man |
| C．the author | D．the subinspector |
It can be inferred that the author felt ________ when he shot the elephant.
| A．excited | B．sad |
| C．frightened | D．happy |
Suppose a key man in your firm had just met with a terrible accident. The doctor tell you that this man upon whom you depend for directing sales, checking your books or for performing some other important roles, will be laid up for months, You’d have to replace him, wouldn’t you? And probably at a pay about equal to his ?
Then you’d be faced with double paying for one job because stopping the pay of an injured man would simply be out of the question.
You can prevent this kind of unproductive outgo on your payroll by providing your key man with the protection of Travelers Business Accident Insurance!
This insurance provides total medical expense and a weekly income in case a key man is disabled for some time. Should the disability prove everlasting, an income for life is certainty. Why not make out a list of your key men now? Then get together with Travelers Insurance Company, and let us tell you how little it costs to apply this much needed protection to your business.
Write and we'll serve you!The above is most probably________．
| A．a report | B．a letter |
| C．an announcement | D．an advertisement |
What is really true according to the above?
| A．Travelers Insurance Company provides services of accident insurance． |
| B．An important person of the firm has just had an accident． |
| C．Accident Insurance will protect the important person from accident． |
| D．Unfortunately the important person has become disabled． |
Whom might the writing be mainly for?
| A．An important person in a firm． |
| B．An employee of a firm． |
| C．The boss of a company． |
| D．Readers of a newspaper． |
Why would the pay be doubled?
| A．Because two persons are doing one job of the same． |
| B．Because the important job is worth double pay． |
| C．Because it is necessary that the injured person should be paid． |
| D．Because the double pay is for two persons． |
Travelers Insurance Company ________ for a person insured．
| A．will pay for all the cost of treatment and the lifelong income |
| B．will pay the weekly income or even that of lifetime |
| C．won’t get much from the firm |
| D．will provide everlasting pension as well as medical expense |
Nowadays more and more people are trapped in too busy work to relax themselves. We have no time to tell a bed-time story to our children, or enjoy a nice dinner with our family, or take a break to think about how we live the precious life, or even meet friends. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us ------ between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there ------ are gone. We have more ways to communicate, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating.
Maybe that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. Some friends of mine try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends on neural processes that are “inherently slow. ” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.
In my own case, I turn to eccentric and often extreme measures to try to keep my sanity and ensure that I have time to do nothing at all. I’ve not yet used a cellphone and I’ve never Tweeted or entered Facebook. I try not to go online till my day’s writing is finished, and I moved from Manhattan to rural Japan.
None of this is a matter of principle or asceticism (苦行主义): it’s just pure selfishness. Nothing makes me feel better-----calmer, clearer and happier----than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” That is the highest of the highest we have been longing for----The Joy of Quiet.The writer sometimes doesn’t do anything because ________.
| A．he is out of work . |
| B．whatever he does make no sense |
| C．he is worried about his writing. |
| D．he can enjoy himself in his leisure time. |
When the writer uses the word “forget” , his real meaning is _______.
| A．Somebody really forgets his cellphone at home. |
| B．Somebody thinks cellphone is not a suitable means of communication. |
| C．Somebody hates modern techniques such as the cellphone. |
| D．Somebody leaves his cellphone at home on purpose. |
Which of the following is right?
| A．It is better to go back to the ancient times since we are so busy now. |
| B．The writer is unwilling to help others since he is selfish. |
| C．Slowing down to find time and space to think and enjoy oneself is urgent. |
| D．We have more to say because we have more ways to communicate. |
What does the underlined word mean?
| A．difference | B．sameness | C．simplicity | D．complication |
What is the main idea of the article?
| A．The importance of spending time in quiet. |
| B．We can do some sports such as yoga to relax. |
| C．Principle or asceticism is important in one’s life. |
| D．The more we communicate, the more we will be closer. |
Susan Sontag (1933----2004) was one of the most noticeable figures in the world of literature. For more than 40 years she made it morally necessary to know everything---to read every book worth reading, to see every movie worth seeing. When she was still in her early 30s, publishing essays in such important magazines as Partisan Review, she appeared as the symbol of American culture life, trying hard to follow every new development in literature, film and art. With great effort and serious judgment, Sontag walked at the latest edges of world culture.
Seriousness was one of Sontag’s lifelong watchwords(格言),but at a time when the barriers between the well-educated and the poor-educated were obvious, she argued for a true openness to the pleasure of pop culture. In Notes on Camp, the 1964 essay that first made her name, she explained what was then a little-known set of difficult understandings, through which she could not have been more famous. “Notes on Camp”, she wrote, represents “ a victory of ‘form’ over ‘content’, ‘beauty’ over ‘morals’”.
By conviction（信念）she was a sensualist, but by nature she was a moralist, and in the works she published in the 1970s and 1980s , it was the latter side of her that came forward. In Illness as Metaphor —published in 1978, after she suffered cancer—she argued against the idea that cancer was somehow a special problem of repressed personalities, a concept that effectively blamed the victim for the disease. In fact, re-examining old positions was her lifelong habit.
In America, her story of a19thcentury Polish actress who set up a perfect society in California, won the National Book Award in 2000.But it was as a all-purpose cultural view that she made her lasting fame. “Sometimes,” she once said, “I feel that, in the end, all I am really defending …is the idea of seriousness, of true seriousness.” And in the end, she made us take it seriously too.The underlined sentence in paragraph 1 means Sontag_________.
| A．was a symbol of American cultural life |
| B．developed world literature, film and art |
| C．published many essays about world culture |
| D．kept pace with the newest development of world culture |
She first won her name through ___________.
| A．her story of a Polish actress |
| B．her book Illness as Metaphor |
| C．publishing essays in magazines like partisan Review |
| D．her explanation of a set of difficult understandings |
According to the passage, Susan Sontag__________.
| A．was a sensualist as well as a moralist |
| B．looked down upon the pop culture |
| C．thought content was more important than form |
| D．blamed the victim of cancer for being repressed |
As for Susan Sontag’s lifelong habit, she __________.
| A．misunderstood the idea of seriousness |
| B．re-examined old positions |
| C．argued for an openness to pop culture |
| D．preferred morals to beauty |
Why Susan Sontag won her lasting fame was because of___________-.
| A．her point which was suitable for common cultural view |
| B．her lifelong watchword：seriousness |
| C．her publishing books on morals |
| D．her enjoying books worth reading and movies worth seeing |
There are new findings that not enough sleep may cause people to gain weight. Researchers say a lack of sleep can produce hormonal(激素的) changes that increase feelings of hunger.
In one study, researchers in the United States examined information on more than 1000 people. The people had taken part in a long-term study of sleep disorders.
Some people slept less than five hours a night. They had 15 percent higher blood levels of a hormone called ghrelin than people who slept eight hours. And they had 15 percent less of the hormone leptin. Experts say ghrelin helps make people feel hungry; leptin makes you feel full.
The scientists say these hormonal changes may be a cause of obesity in Western societies. They note the combination that sleep limitation is common and food is widely available.
The results were not affected by how much people exercised. People who are awake longer have more time to burn energy. But the researchers say loss of sleep may increase hunger especially for high-calorie foods, so people gain weight. It seems that, for survival, the body may be designed to store more fat during times with less sleep.
Researchers from Stanford University in California and the University of Wisconsin did the study. They found that the best amount of sleep for weight control is 7.7 hours a night.
The Public Library of Science published the findings in its journal Medicine . Internet users can read the full study, free of charge, at plos. org.Not enough sleep can cause obesity by ______.
| A．burning more of your energy |
| B．making you want to eat more food |
| C．keeping you from doing exercise |
| D．helping you feel great without food |
Which would be a point supported by the reported findings?
The more you sleep, the farther away you are from obesity.
Those who don’t sleep at all are the most likely to put on weight.
Sleeping contributes more to obesity than eating.
It’s not wise to use sleep hours for exercise.When you sleep 7.7 hours a night, you will ______ .
have your ghrelin level rise and leptin level drop
have your leptin level rise and ghrelin level drop
have your ghretin and leptin levels properly balanced
have your hunger increase and your weight decrease The writer wrote this passage to _______ .
| A．make a news report |
| B．offer a piece of medical advice |
| C．make an advertisement |
| D．keep a record of the old findings |
You can read the findings________.
| A．Only on the Internet |
| B．only in Medicine |
| C．Both on the Internet and in Medicine |
| D．Neither on the Internet nor in Medicine |
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