1
Drunken-driving sometimes called America's socially accepted form of murder -- has become a national epidemic. Every hour of every day about three Americans on average are killed by drunken drivers, adding up to an incredible 250,000 over the past decade. A drunken driver is usually defined as one with a 0.10 blood alcohol contentor roughly three beers, glasses of wine or shots of whisky drunk within two hours. Heavy drinking used to be an acceptable part of the American macho image and judges were lenient in most courts, but the drunken slaughter has recently caused so many well-publicized tragedies, especially involving young children, that public opinion is no longer so tolerant.
Twenty states have raised the legal drinking age to 21, reversing a trend in the 1960s to reduce it to 18. After New Jersey lowered it to 18, the number of people killed by 18-20-year-old drivers more than doubled, so the state recently upped it back to 21.
Reformers, however, fear raising the drinking age will have little effect unless accompanied by educational programmes to help young people to develop \attitudes\
Tough new laws have led to increased arrests and tests and in many areas already, to a marked decline in fatalities. Some states are also penalizing bars for serving customers too many drinks. A tavern in Massachusetts was fined for serving six or more double brandies to a customer who was \intoxicated\and later drove off the road, killing a nine-year-old boy.
As the fatalities continue to occur daily in every state, some Americans are even beginning to speak well of the 13 years national prohibition of alcohol that began in 1919, which President Hoover called the \experiment\They forget that legal prohibition didn't stop drinking, but encouraged political corruption and organized crime. As with the booming drug trade generally, there is no easy solution. 1. Drunken driving has become a major problem in America because _____.
A) most Americans are heavy drinkers
B) Americans are now less shocked by road accidents C) accidents attract so much publicity
D) drinking is a socially accepted habit in America
2. Why has public opinion regarding drunken driving changed?
A) Detailed statistics are now available. B) The news media have highlighted the problem. C) Judges are giving more severe sentences.
D) Drivers are more conscious of their image.
3. Statistics issued in New Jersey suggested that _____.
A) many drivers were not of legal age B) young drivers were often bad drivers C) the level of drinking increased in the 1960s D) the legal drinking age should be raised
4. Laws recently introduced in some states have _____.
A) reduced the number of convictions B) resulted in fewer serious accidents
C) prevented bars from serving drunken customers D) specified the amount drivers can drink
5. Why is the problem of drinking and driving difficult to solve?
A) Alcohol is easily obtained.
B) Drinking is linked to organized crime. C) Legal prohibition has already failed. D) Legislation alone is not sufficient.
DBDBD 2
Los Angeles-Bill Joy is not a Luddite. He is not afraid of new technology. As founder and chief scientist of the Silicon Valley Company, he has been on the vanguard of the high tech revolution for 20 years. But recently Joy took a glimpse into the future and it scared him to death. What he saw was a world in which humans have been effectively supplanted by machines; a world in which super powerful computers with at least some attributes of human intelligence manage to replicate themselves and develop their own autonomy and people become superfluous and risk becoming extinct.
\all the power to the machines. But what we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them would amount to suicide.\Previously, Joy had dismissed such scenarios as sci-fi fantasy, but then he listened to friends who were experts in robotics and realized that this brave new world was much closer than any of us might imagine -- as close as 30 years away. The further that Joy dug into the cutting edge of research in the new technologies -- robotics, genetic engineering and Nan technology -- the more horrified he became. Not only did he see scenarios in which robots would like to take on a life of their own and exterminate the human race, but also he began to see ways in which other staples of sci-fi horror might come to pass. Specifically, robots, engineered organism, and Nan bots share a dangerous amplifying factor: they can self-replicate. A bomb is blown only once -- but one robot can become many, and quickly get out of control. \of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals. We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes.\down the path to alter course? I don't believe so, but we aren't trying yet, and the last chance to assert control -- the fail-safe point -- is rapidly approaching.\1. According to the passage, the word \
A) the name of a place where science is underdeveloped. B) the name of a country.
C) the name of an organization which aims to advocate developing the new technology.
D) the name of a party which protest at developing science.
2. From the passage, we know that it is that scared Bill Joy to death?
A) robots have been practically running the world. B) humans are actually at the mercy of the machines.
C) humans are facing a fatal situation that the machines are out of control gradually and the machines will overwhelm the whole world.
D) humans will be exiled from the earth by the machines and they have to explore another fixed star.
3. What does the sentence \last paragraph, line 5) indicate?
A) It is high time for us to give an end to the new technologies. B) We should cease to explore the perilous Nan technology.
C) Humans have to devote themselves to save the whole world by containing and wrecking the machines.
D) It is right time for humans to dominate the high developing technology effectively and handle it skillfully.
4. Bill Joy realized the situation that _____.
A) the day when the world controlled by the machines is just round the corner B) the human world is on the edge of an exceeding danger
C) the machines in the future will be as perilous as the mass destruction D) humans are now on their wit's end
5. Which of the following can best describe the author's attitude towards the future relationship between humans and machines?
A) Optimistic. B) Pessimistic. C) Confident. D) Indifferent. DCDBB
3
The study of philosophies should make our own ideas flexible. We are all of us apt to take certain general ideas for granted, and call them common sense. We should learn that other people have held quite different ideas, and that our own have started as very original guesses of philosophers.
A scientist is apt to think that all the problems of philosophy will ultimately be solved by science. I think this is true for a great many of the questions on which philosophers still argue. For example, Plato thought that when we saw something, one ray of light came to it from the sun, and another from our eyes and that seeing was something like feeling with a stick. We now know that the light comes from the sun, and is reflected into our eyes. We don't know in much detail how the changes in our eyes give rise to sensation. But there is every reason to think that as we learn more about the physiology of the brain, we shall do so, and that the great philosophical problems about knowledge are going to be pretty fully cleared up. But if our descendants know the answers to these questions and others that perplex us today, there will still be one field of which they do not know, namely the future. However exact our science, we cannot know it as we know the past. Philosophy may be described as argument about things of which we are ignorant. And where science gives us a hope of knowledge it is often reasonable to suspend judgment. That is one reason why Marx and Engels quite rightly wrote to many philosophical problems that interested their contemporaries.
But we have got to prepare for the future, and we cannot do so rationally without some philosophy. Some people say we have only got to do the duties revealed in the past and laid down by religion, and god will look after the future. Other say that the world is a machine and the course of future events is certain, whatever efforts we may make, Marxists say that the future depends on ourselves, even though we are part of the historical process. This philosophical view certainly does inspire people to very great achiements. Whether it is true or not, it is powerful guide to action.
We need a philosophy, then, to help us to tackle the future. Agnosticism easily becomes an excuse for laziness and conservation. Whether we adopt Marxism or any other philosophy, we cannot understand it without knowing something of how it developed. That is why knowledge of the history of philosophy is important to Marxism, even during the present critical days. 1. What is the main idea of this passage?
A) The main idea of this passage is the argument whether philosophy will ultimately be solved by science or not.
B) The importance of learning philosophies, especially the history of philosophy. C) The difference between philosophy and science.