1997--2013考研英语阅读真题.docx

199? 年Passage 1It was 3: 45 in the morning when the vote was finally taken. After six months of arguing and final 16 hours of hot parliamentary debates,Australia's Northern Territory became the first legal authority in the work! to allow doctors to take the lives of incurably ill patients who wish to die. The measure passed by the convincing vote of 15 to 10. Almost immediately word flashed on the Internet and was picked up, half a world away, by John Hofsess, executive director of the Right to Die Society of Canada. He sent it on via the group's on-line service, Death NET SaysHofsess: MWe posted bulletins all day long, because of course this isn't just something that happened in Australia. It's world history."The full import may take a while to sink in. The NT Rights of the Terminally Ill law has left physicians and citizens alike trying to deal with its moral and practical implications. Some have breathed sighs of relief, others, including churches, rightto-life groups and the Australian MedicalAssociation, bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its passage. But the tide is unlikely to turn back In Australia-where an aging popuhtion, life-extending technology and changing community attitudes have all played their part-other states are going to consider making a similar law to deal with euthanasia. In the US and Canada, where the rightto-die movement is gathering strength, observers are waiting for the dominoes to start falling.Under the new Northern Territory law, an adult patient can request deathprobably by a deadly injection or pill-to put an end to suffering.The patient must be diagnosed as terminally ill by two doctors. After a "cooling off" period of seven days, the patient can sign a certificate of request. After 48 hours the wish for death can be met. For Lloyd Nickson, a 54-year-old Darwin resident suffering from lung cancer, the NT Rights of Terminally 111 law means he can get on with living without the haunting fear of his suffering: a terrifying death from his breathing condition.'Tm not afraid of dying from a spiritual point of view, but what I was afraid of was how I'd go, because I've watched people die in the hospital fighting for oxygen and clawing at their masks," he says.Passage 2A report consistently brought back by visitors to the US is how friendly; courteous, and helpful most Americans were to them. To be fain this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians, and should best be considered North American. There are, of course, exceptions. Small-minded officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US. Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment.For a bng period of time and in many parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence. Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another. Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of diversion, and brought news of the outside world.The harsh realities of the frontier also shaped this tradition of hospitality. Someone traveling alone, if hungry, injured, or ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest cabin or settlement. It was not a matter of choice for the traveler or merely a charitable impulse on the part of the settlers. It reflected the harshness of daily life: if you didn't take in the stranger and take care of him, there was no one else who would. And someday, remember; you might be in the same situation.Today there are many charitable organizations which specialize in helping the weary traveler Yet, the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the US, especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist trails. MI was just traveling through, got talking with this American, and pretty soon he invited me home for dinneramazing." Such observations reported by visitors to the US are not uncommon, but are not always understood properly. The casual friendliness of many Americans should be interpreted neither as superficial nor as artificial but as the result of a historically devebped cultural tradition.As is true of any devebped society; in America a complex set of cultural signals, assumptions, and conventions underlies all social interrelationships. And, of course, speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands social and cultural patterns. Visitors who fail to “translate“ cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions. For example, when an American uses the word “friend'： the cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor's language and culture. It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to distinguish between courteous convention and individual interest. Yet, being friendly is a virtue that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers.Passage 3Technically, any substance other than food that alters our bodily or mental functioning is a drug. Many people mistakenly believe the term drug refers only to some sort of medicine or an illegal chemical taken by drug addicts. They don't realize that familiar substances such as alcohol and tobacco are also drugs. This is why the more neutral term substance is now used by many physicians and psychobgists. The phrase"substance abuse" is often used instead of “drug abuse" to make clear that substances such as alcohol and tobacco can be just as harmfully misused as heroin and cocaine.We live in a society in which the medical and social use of substances (drugs) is pervasive: an aspirin to quiet a headache, some wine to be sociable, coffee to get going in the morning, a cigarette for the nerves. When do these socially acceptable and apparently constructive uses of a substance become misuses? First of all most substances taken in excess will produce negative effects such as poisoning or intense perceptual distortions. Repeated use of a substance can also lead to physical addiction or substance dependence. Dependence is marked first by an increased tolerance, with more and more of the substance required to produce the desired effect, and then by the appearance of unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when the substance is discontinued.Drugs (substances) that affect the central nervous system and alter perception, mood, and behavior are known as psychoactive substances.Psychoactive substances are commonly grouped according to whether they are stimulants, depressants, or hallucinogens. Stimulants initially speed up or activate the central nervous system, whereas depressants sbw it down. Hallucinogens have their primary effect on perception, distorting and altering it in a variety of ways including producing hallucinations. These are the substances often called psychedelic (from the Greek word meaning “mind-manifestation") because they seemed to radically alter one's state of consciousness.Passage 4No company likes to be told it is contributing to the moral decline of a nation. "Is this what you intended to accomplish with your careers?"Senator Robert Dole asked Time Warner executives last week. *Ybu have sold your souls, but must you corrupt our nation and threaten our children as well?" At Time Warner; however; such questions are simply the htest manifestation of the soul-searching that has involved the company ever since the company was born in 1990. It's a self-examination that has, at various times, involved issues of responsibility, creative freedom and the corporate bottom line.At the core of this debate is chairman Gerald Levin, 56, who took over for the late Steve Ross in 1992. On the financial front, Levin is under pressure to raise the stock price and reduce the company's mountainous debt, which will increase to $ 17.3 billion after two new cable deals ctose.He has promised to sell off some of the property and restructure the company, but investors are waiting impatiently.The flap over rap is not making life any easier for him. Levin has consistently defended the company's rap music on the grounds of expression. In 1992, when Time Warner was under fire for releasing Ice-T's violent rap song Cop Killer; Levin described rap as a lawful expression of street culture, which deserves an outlet. °The test of any democratic society "he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, °lies not in how well it can control expression but in whether it gives freedom of thought and expression the widest possible latitude, however disputable or irritating the results may sometimes be. We won't retreat in the face of any threats."Levin would not comment on the debate hst week, but there were signs that the chairman was backing off his hard-line stand at least to some extent. During the discussion of rock singing verses at last month's stockholders' meeting, Levin asserted that “music is not the cause of society's ills" and even cited his son, a teacher in the Bronx, New York, who uses rap to communicate with students. But he talked as well about the "balanced struggle" between creative freedom and social responsibility, and he announced that the company would launch a drive to devebp standards for distribution and labeling of potentially objectionable music.The 15-member Time Warner board is generally supportive of Levin and his corporate strategy. But insiders say several of them have shown their concerns in this matter. "Some of us have known for many many years that the freedoms under the First Amendment are not totally unlimited,“ says Luce. "I think it is perhaps the case that some people associated with the company have only recently come to realize this.”Passage 5Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as “steering the economy to a soft landing" or "a touch on the brakes" makes it sound like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain. And there are long, variable lags before policy changes have any effect on the economy. Hence the anabgy that likens the conduct of monetary policy to driving a car with a blackened windscreen, a cracked rear-view mirror and a faulty steering wheeLGiven all these disadvantages, central bankers seem to have had much to boast about of late. Average inflation in the big seven industrial economies fell to a mere 2.3% last year; close to its lowest level in 30 years, before rising slightly to 2.5% this July. This is a long way below the double-digit rates which many countries experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s.It is also less than most forecasters had predicted. In late 1994 the panel of economists which The Economist polls each month said thatAmerica's inflation rate would average 3.5% in 1995. In fact, it fell to 2.6% in August, and is expected to average only about 3% for the year as a whole. In Britain and Japan inflation is running half a percentage point below the rate predicted at the end of last year. This is no flash in the pan;over the past couple of years, inflation has been consistently bwer than expected in Britain and America.Economists have been particuhrly surprised by favourable inflation figures in Britain and the United States, since conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America's, have little productive shck. America's capacity utilisation, for example, hit historically high levels earlier this year; and its jobless rate (5.6% in August) has fallen bebw most estimates of the natural rate of unempbyment-the rate below which inflation has taken off in the past.Why has inflation proved so mild? The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately; a little defective. Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have up-ended the old economic modek that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.1998 年Text 1Few creations of big technobgy capture the imagination like giant dams. Perhaps it is humankind's long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the idea of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascinating. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind Several giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than goodThe lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful It doesn't help that building a big, powerful dam has become a symbol of achievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypt's leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam.Turkey's bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam.But big dams tend not to work as intended. The Aswan Dam, for example, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left - all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity.And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. This week, in the heart of civilized Europe, Sbvaks and Hungarians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danube. The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams.But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself.Meanwhile, in India, the World Bank has given the go-ahead to the even more wrong-headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction. The benefits are for the powerful but they are far from guaranteed.Proper; scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the cost and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts.Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible without building monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper; or scientific. It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan. You don't need a dam to be saved.Text 2Well no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revivalWhat is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presiding over is for realThe official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together; productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year; which is more than twice the 1978-87 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a "disjunction" between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics.Some o