单项选择题

Greg Focker, played by Ben Stiller, represents a generation of American kids (1) in the 1980s on the philosophy that any achievement, however slight, (2) a ribbon. (3) replaced punishment; criticism became a dirty word. In Texas, teachers were advised to (4) using red ink, the colour of (5) . In California, a task force was set up to (6) the concept of self worth into the education system. Swathing youngsters in a (7) shield of self-esteem, went the philosophy, would protect them from the nasty things in life, such as bad school grades, underage sex, drug abuse, dead-end jobs and criminality.
(8) that the ninth-place ribbons are in danger of strangling the (9) children they were supposed to help. America’s (10) with self-esteem--like all developments in psychology, it gradually (11) its way to Britain--has turned children who were (12) with (13) into adults who (14) at even the mildest brickbats. Many believe that the feel-good culture has risen at the (15) of traditional education, an opinion espoused in a new book, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can’t Read, Write, or Add, by the conservative commentator Charles Sykes.
Not only that, but the foundations (16) which the self-esteem industry is built are being (17) as decidedly shaky. Roy Baumeister, professor of psychology at Florida State University and once a self-esteem enthusiast, is now (18) a revision of the populist orthodoxy. "After all these years, I’m sorry to say, my recommendation is this: forget, about self-esteem and (19) more on self-control and self-dlscipline," he wrote recently. "Recent work suggests this would be good for the individual and good for society--and might even be able to (20) some of those promises that self-esteem once made but could not keep.\

单项选择题When young people who want to be journalists ask me what subject they should study after leaving school, I tell them: "Anything except journalism or media studies." Most veterans of my trade would say the same. It is practical advice. For obvious reasons, newspaper editors like to employ people who can bring something other than a knowledge of the media to the party that we call our work.
On The Daily Telegraph, for example, the editor of London Spy is a theologian by academic training. The obituaries editor is a philosopher. The editor of our student magazine, Juice, studied physics. As for myself, I read history, ancient and modern, at the taxpayer’s expense.
I am not sure what Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, would make of all this. If I understand him correctly, he would think that the public money spent on teaching this huge range of disciplines to the staff of The Daily Telegraph was pretty much wasted. The only academic course of which he would wholeheartedly approve in the list above would be physics -but then again, he would probably think it a terrible waste that Simon Hogg chose to edit Juice instead of designing aeroplanes or building nuclear reactors. By that, he seems to mean that everything taught at the public expense should have a direct, practical application that will benefit society and the economy.
It is extremely alarming that the man in charge of Britain’s education system should think in this narrow-minded, half-witted way. The truth, of course, is that all academic disciplines benefit society and the economy, whether in a direct and obvious way or not. They teach students to think--to process information and to distinguish between what is important and unimportant, true and untrue. Above all, a country in which academic research and intelligent ideas are allowed to flourish is clearly a much more interesting, stimulating and enjoyable place than one without "ornaments", in which money and usefulness are all that count.
Mr. Clarke certainly has a point when he says that much of what is taught in Britain’s universities is useless. But it is useless for a far more serious reason than that it lacks any obvious economic utility. As the extraordinarily high drop-out rate testifies, it is useless because it fails the first test of university teaching---that it should stimulate the interest of those being taught. When students themselves think that their courses are a waste of time and money, then a waste they are.
The answer is not to cut off state funding for the humanities. It is to offer short, no nonsense vocational courses to those who want to learn a trade, and reserve university places for those who want to pursue an academic discipline. By this means, a great deal of wasted money could be saved and all students the academic and the no, so-academic--would benefit. What Mr. Clarke Seems to be proposing instead is an act of cultural vandalism that would rob Britain of all claim to be called a civilised country.

单项选择题The Net success of "Lazy Sunday" represents a defining moment for the film and television business. Advances in digital video and broadband have vastly lowered the cost of production and distribution. Filmmakers are now following the path blazed by bloggers and musicians, cheaply creating and uploading their work to the Web. If it appeals to any of the Net’s niches, millions of users will pass along their films through e-mail, downloads or links. It’s the dawn of the democratization of the TV and film business--even unknown personalities are being propelled by the enthusiasm of their fans into pop-culture prominence, sometimes without even traditional intermediaries like talent agents or film festivals.
"This is like bypass surgery,’ says Dan Harmon, a filmmaker whose monthly L. A. -based film club and Web site, Channel 101, lets members submit short videos, such as the recent 70s’ music mockumentary "Yacht Rock," and vote on which they like best. "Finally we have a new golden age where the artist has a direct connection to the audience;"
The directors behind "Lazy Sunday" embody the phenomenon. When the shaggy-haired Samberg, 27, graduated from NYU Film School in 2001, he faced the conventional challenge or, crashing the gates Of Hollywood. With his two childhood friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, he came up with an unconventional solution: they started recording music parodies and comic videos, and posting them to their Web site, TheLonelyisland. com.
The material got the attention of producers at the old ABC sitcom "Spin City", where Samberg and Taccone worked as low-level assistants; the producers sent a compilation to a talent agency. The friends got an agent, made a couple of pilot TV sketch shows for Comedy Central and Fox, featuring themselves hamming it up in nearly all the roles, and wrote jokes for the MTV Movie Awards. Even when the networks passed on their pilots, Samberg and his friends simply posted the episodes online and their fan base--at 40,000 unique visitors a month earlier this year--grew larger. Last August, Samberg joined the "SNL" cast, and Schaffer and Taccone became writers. Now they share an office in Rockefeller Center and "are a little too cute for everyone," Samberg says, "We are friends living our dream."
Short, funny videos like "Lazy Sunday" happen to translate online, but not everything works as well. Bite-size films are more practical than longer ones; comedy plays better than drama. But almost everything is worth trying, since the tools to create and post video are now so cheap, and ad hoc audiences can form around any sensibility, however eccentric.

单项选择题This line of inquiry did not begin until earlier this month--more than three months after the accident--because there were "too many emotions, too many egos," said retired Adm. Harold Gehman, chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.
Testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee, Gehman said this part of his inquiry Was in its earliest stages, starting just 10 days ago. But Gehman said he already has concluded it is "inconceivable" that NASA would have been unable or unwilling to attempt a rescue for astronaut, s in orbit if senior shuttle managers and administrators had known there was fatal damage to Columbia’s left wing.
Gehman told reporters after the hearing that answers to these important questions could have enormous impact, since they could place in a different context NASA’s decisions against more aggressively checking possible wing damage in the days before Columbia’s fatal return.
Investigators believe breakaway insulating foam damaged part of Columbia’s wing Shortly after liftoff, allowing superheated air to penetrate the wing during its fiery re-entry on Feb. 1 and melt it from the inside.
Among those decisions was the choice by NASA’s senior shuttle managers and administrators to reject offers of satellite images of possible damage to Columbia’s left wing before the accident. The subject dominated the early part of Wednesday’s hearing. Gehman complained that managers and administrators "missed signals" when they rejected those offers for images, a pointedly harsh assessment of the space agency’s inaction during the 16 day shuttle mission.
"We will attempt to pin this issue down in our report, but there were a number of bureaucratic and administrative missed signals here," Gehman told senators. "We’re not quite so happy with the process."
The investigative board already had recommended that NASA push for better coordination between the space agency and military offices in charge of satellites and telescopes. The U. S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency in March agreed to regularly capture detailed satellite images of space shuttles in orbit.
Still, Gehman said it was unclear whether even images from America’s most sophisticated spy satellites might have detected on Columbia’s wing any damage, which Gehman said could have been as small as two inches square. The precise capabilities of such satellites was a sensitive topic during the Senate hearing.

问答题

Washington, June 22--More than three decades after the Endangered Species Act gave the federal government tools and a mandate to protect animals, insects and plants threatened with extinction, the landmark law is facing the most intense efforts ever by the White House, Congress, landowners and industry to limit its reach.
(46) More than any time in the law’s 32-year history, the obligations it imposes on government and, indirectly, on landowners are being challenged in the courts, reworked in the agencies responsible for enforcing it and re-examined in Congress.
In some cases, the challenges are broad and sweeping, as when the Bush administration, in a legal battle over the best way to protect endangered salmon, declared Western dams to be as much. a part of the landscape as the rivers they control. (47) In others, the actions are deep in the realm of regulatory bureaucracy, as when a White House appointee at the Interior Department sought to influence scientific recommendations involving the sage grouse(松鸡), a bird whose habitat includes areas of likely oil and gas deposits.
Some environmentalists readily concede that the law has long overemphasized the stick (处罚)and provided fewer carrots(奖励) for private interests than it might. But some of them also fear that the law’s defects will be used as a justification for a wholesale evisceration(修改法案使之失去效力).
"There’s an alignment of the planets of people against the Endangered Species Act in Congress, in the White House and in the agencies," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife, a lobbying group based in Washington.
(48) On the opposite side, Robert D. Thornton, a lawyer for developers and Indian tribes in Southern California, has argued for years that the government goes too far to protect threatened species and curtails(剥夺) people’s ability to use their own land.
"I’ve raised a child and sent him through college waiting for Congress to amend the Endangered Species Act," he said. "But I do think that a lot of forces are joining now."
(49) The Endangered Species Act of 1973 set out a goal that, polls show, is still widely admired: ensuring that species facing extinction be saved and robust populations be restored.
Currently 1,264 species are considered threatened or endangered. Some, like the bighorn sheep of the Southern California mountains, have obvious popular appeal and a constituency, while others, like the Kretschmarr Cave mold beetle in South Texas, are an acquired taste.
But in the past 30 years lawsuits from all sides have proliferated. (50)And more private land, particularly in the West, has been designated critical habitat for species, potentially subjecting it to federal controls that could limit construction, logging, fishing and other activities.
A "critical habitat" designation gives the federal government no direct authority to regulate private land use, but it does require federal agencies to take the issue into account when making regulatory decisions about private development.
The conflicts are becoming sharper as the needs of newly recognized endangered species are interfering more often with the demands of exurban development.