鼓励一下自己,我相信明年这个时候我就开始准备去美国了,哈哈!
No. 2-2SECTION A
NO. 1
Even as the number of females processed through juvenile courts climbs steadily, an implicit consensus remains among scholars in criminal justice that male adolescents define the delinquency problem in the United States. We suggest two reasons why this view persists. First, female adolescents are accused primarily of victimless crimes, such as truancy, that do not involve clear-cut damage to persons or property. If committed by adults, these actions are not even considered prosecutable; if committed by juvenile males, they have traditionally been looked on leniently by the courts. Thus, ironically, the plight of female delinquents receives little scrutiny because they are accused of committing relatively minor offenses. Second, the courts have long justified so-called preventive intervention into the lives of young females viewed as antisocial with the rationale that women are especially vulnerable. Traditional stereotypes of women as the weaker and more dependent sex have led to earlier intervention and longer periods of misdirected supervision for female delinquents than for males.
17.
Which of the following statements best expresses the irony pointed out by the authors in lines 13-16 of the passage?
(A) Female delinquents tend to commit victimless crimes more frequently than their male counterparts.
(B) The predicament of male delinquents receives more attention than that of females because males are accused of more serious crimes.
(C) Adults are frequently punished less severely than adolescents for committing more serious crimes.
(D) The juvenile justice system cannot correct its biases because it does not even recognize them.
(E) Although the number of female delinquents is steadily increasing, the crimes of which they are accused are not particularly serious.
18.
It can be inferred from the passage that the authors believe traditional stereotypes of women to be
(A) frequently challenged
(B) persistently inexplicable
(C) potentially harmful
(D) rapidly changing
(E) habitually disregarded
19.
The passage suggests that scholars in criminal justice could be criticized for which of the following?
(A) Underestimating the seriousness of juvenile crime
(B) Rationalizing the distinction made between juveniles and adults in the legal system
(C) Concerning themselves too little with the prevention of juvenile delinquency
(D) Focusing on those whose crimes have involved damage to persons or property
(E) Failing to point out injustices in the correctional system
NO. 2
Scattered around the globe are more than one hundred regions of volcanic activity known as hot spots (hot spot: a place in the upper mantle of the earth at which hot magma from the lower mantle upwells to melt through the crust usually in the interior of a tectonic plate to form a volcanic feature; also: a place in the crust overlying a hot spot). Unlike most volcanoes, hot spots are rarely found along the boundaries of the continental and oceanic plates that comprise the Earth’s crust; most hot spots lie deep in the interior of plates and are anchored deep in the layers of the Earth’s surface. Hot spots are also distinguished from other volcanoes by their lavas, which contain greater amounts of alkali metals than do those from volcanoes at plate margins.
In some cases, plates moving past hot spots have left trails of extinct volcanoes in much the same way that wind passing over a chimney carries off puffs of smoke. It appears that the Hawaiian Islands were created in such a manner by a single source of lava, welling up from a hot spot, over which the Pacific Ocean plate passed on a course roughly from the east toward the northwest, carrying off a line of volcanoes of increasing age. Two other Pacific island chains—the Austral Ridge and the Tuamotu Ridge—parallel the configuration of the Hawaiian chain; they are also aligned from the east toward the northwest, with the most recent volcanic activity near their eastern terminuses.
That the Pacific plate and the other plates are moving is now beyond dispute; the relative motion of the plates has been reconstructed in detail. However, the relative motion of the plates with respect to the Earth’s interior cannot be determined easily. Hot spots provide the measuring instruments for resolving the question of whether two continental plates are moving in opposite directions or whether one is stationary and the other is drifting away from it. The most compelling evidence that a continental plate is stationary is that, at some hot spots, lavas of several ages are superposed instead of being spread out in chronological sequence. Of course, reconstruction of plate motion from the tracks of hot-spot volcanoes assumes that hot spots are immobile, or nearly so. Several studies support such an assumption, including one that has shown that prominent hot spots throughout the world seem not to have moved during the past ten million years.
Beyond acting as frames of reference, hot spots apparently influence the geophysical processes that propel the plates across the globe. When a continental plate comes to rest over a hot spot, material welling up from deeper layers forms a broad dome that, as it grows, develops deep fissures. In some instances, the continental plate may rupture entirely along some of the fissures so that the hot spot initiates the formation of a new ocean. Thus, just as earlier theories have explained the mobility of the continental plates, so hot-spot activity may suggest a theory to explain their mutability.
20.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) describe the way in which hot spots influence the extinction of volcanoes
(B) describe and explain the formation of the oceans and continents
(C) explain how to estimate the age of lava flows from extinct volcanoes
(D) describe hot spots and explain how they appear to influence and record the motion of plates
(E) describe the formation and orientation of island chains in the Pacific Ocean
21.
According to the passage, hot spots differ from most volcanoes in that hot spots
(A) can only be found near islands
(B) are active whereas all other volcanoes are extinct
(C) are situated closer to the earth’s surface
(D) can be found along the edges of the plates
(E) have greater amounts of alkali metals in their lavas
22.
It can be inferred from the passage that evidence for the apparent course of the Pacific plate has been provided by the
(A) contours of the continents
(B) dimensions of ocean hot spots
(C) concurrent movement of two hot spots
(D) pattern of fissures in the ocean floor
(E) configurations of several mid-ocean island chains
23.
It can be inferred from the passage that the spreading out of lavas of different ages at hot spots indicates that a
(A) hot spot is active
(B) continental plate has moved
(C) continental rupture is imminent
(D) hot spot had been moving very rapidly
(E) volcano contains large concentrations of alkali metals
24.
The passage suggests which of the following about the Hawaiian Islands, the Austral Ridge, and the Tuamotu Ridge?
(A) The three chains of islands are moving eastward.
(B) All the islands in the three chains have stopped moving.
(C) The three island chains are a result of the same plate movement.
(D) The Hawaiian Islands are receding from the other two island chains at a relatively rapid rate.
(E) The Austral Ridge and the Tuamotu Ridge chains have moved closer together whereas the Hawaiian Islands have remained stationary.
25.
Which of the following, if true, would best support the author’s statement that hot-spot activity may explain the mutability of continental plates?
(A) Hot spots move more rapidly than the continental and oceanic plates.
(B) Hot spots are reliable indicators of the age of continental plates.
(C) Hot spots are regions of volcanic activity found only in the interiors of the continental plates.
(D) The alignment of hot spots in the Pacific Ocean parallels the alignment of Pacific Ocean islands.
(E) The coastlines of Africa and South America suggest that they may once have constituted a single continent that ruptured along a line of hot spots.
26.
The author’s argument that hot spots can be used to reconstruct the movement of continental plates is weakened by the fact that
(A) hot spots are never found at the boundaries of plates
(B) only extinct volcanoes remain after a plate moves over a hot spot
(C) lava flow patterns for all hot spots have not been shown to be the same
(D) the immobility or near immobility of hot spots has not been conclusively proven
(E) the changing configurations of islands make pinpointing the locations of hot spots difficult
27.
The author’s style can best be described as
(A) dramatic
(B) archaic
(C) esoteric
(D) objective
(E) humanistic
阅读economist楼层
Government and business in America Piling on
May 28th 2009
From The Economist print edition In his zeal to fix capitalism, Barack Obama must not stifle America’s dynamism
Illustration by KAL
DEFENDING American capitalism these days is a thankless job. Reckless lending by American financiers produced a crisis that has pushed the world into its worst recession since the 1930s. Tales of greed and fraud during the boom years abound.
Small wonder that although Americans still prefer their government neat and local, they are a little less hostile to federal activism these days (see article). Such sentiments, last November, helped propel Barack Obama into the White House and his Democratic Party to bigger majorities in both houses of Congress. As Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, says, Mr Obama does not want to waste this crisis. He is using it to create a bigger role for government throughout the economy, from education and health care to banking and energy.
He, and Congress, risk overreaching. America has experienced a failure of finance, not of capitalism. Its broader economy remains an astonishing Petri dish of creative destruction.(句子很好,学习) Even in boom times, 15% of American jobs disappear each year. Their places are taken by new ones created by start-ups and expansions. This dynamism remains evident today, amid the most crushing economic conditions most businesses have encountered (see our special report in this issue). As icons of consumer excess like Starbucks and Neiman Marcus stumble, purveyors of frugality like Burger King and Wal-Mart prosper. Americans are adept at finding opportunity in adversity. Where government helps
The American economy is dynamic because Americans like it that way, even now. A Pew poll released on May 21st found that 76% of Americans agree that the country’s strength is “mostly based on the success of American business” and 90% admire people who “get rich by working hard”. These proportions have changed little in two decades, and they tend to produce government policies that make America, according to the World Bank, consistently one of the best places to do business.
Yet Mr Obama—and, even more, his Democratic allies in Congress—could do lasting damage to this marvellous machine. That is not because the president is a socialist, as his detractors on talk radio claim. No true leftist would be as allergic as he has been to nationalising tottering banks, nor as coldly calculating in letting Chrysler, and probably General Motors, end up in bankruptcy court.
Moreover, even the most stalwart defenders of the free market, including this newspaper, admit it has shortcomings that only the government can address.(中心句) The financial system requires close oversight, or crises will destabilise it (see article). In recent years, such oversight has often been absent or fragmented. Only government can enforce competition rules, insist that business and consumers limit carbon-dioxide emissions, or intervene to make health care available to those too sick or poor to afford it.(好句子) And the current crisis calls for aggressive and temporary fiscal and monetary intervention that is not justified in ordinary times.
But the Democrats’ present zeal for government activism often goes well beyond addressing market failures. The president and Congress seem to believe that they can surgically intervene in the economy but overlook the unintended consequences. They are willing to demonise business when doing so furthers their aims. In one breath Mr Obama praises a bank that wrote down its claims on Chrysler and in the next lashes out at investors who, as was their right, did not.
Members of his team believe that tougher rules for business are necessary to cool voter anger that would otherwise result in even more vindictive measures. But rather than tamping down the backlash, they may only feed it. They aggravate that risk by outsourcing rule-writing to Congress, as with the fiscal stimulus and carbon emissions and, soon, health care. Congress is much more likely than the executive branch to let special interests or demagoguery shape the outcome. Creating new monsters
Too often, the result is overkill. Last December the Federal Reserve approved sweeping new rules on credit cards. Congress said it was not enough, and passed its own law which takes effect sooner and is even more restrictive. Some provisions restrain genuinely odious practices, such as charging interest on already-paid balances, but others prevent banks from tailoring interest rates to customers’ changing risks.
The approach to energy is worse. Under a mammoth carbon-emissions bill now working its way through Congress, 85% of valuable permits to emit carbon dioxide (which might all have been auctioned) will be given away free. This creates a huge new pot of favours for government to hand out, and new incentives for businesses to lobby. It will be costlier to fight climate change, while harder to avoid political favour-trading.
Mr Obama’s people seem sincere when they say they want to rid the government of its stakes in banks and carmakers as soon as possible. But in the meantime they are introducing new rules, such as limits on performance-related pay at banks, that could do more harm than good (see article). Nor can they resist using that ownership to push goals unrelated to the firms’ welfare, such as pressing banks to relent on foreclosures or carmakers to make alternative-fuel cars for which there is no obvious demand. On top of that, they are passing more stringent fuel-economy standards that favour light trucks over cars. A far less distorting (and transparent) way to cut carbon emissions and raise fuel economy would be a carbon tax—but almost no one in Washington has the courage to propose one.
These mistakes matter because, for all Mr Obama’s oratory, it will be very hard to reverse course in future. Regulations and interventions spawn constituencies that will fight any paring of their benefits. The federal government created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the big mortgage agencies, in the interest of raising home-ownership. But long after that goal was met, the housing lobby barred almost all efforts to rein them in. Only massive taxpayer bail-outs have prevented their collapse.
America’s free-market capitalism has always been a model for the rest of the world. By all means fix its flaws, Mr Obama; but do not take its dynamism for granted.作者: cooljcq 时间: 2009-6-2 10:22:13