You don’t have to ask Barack Obama what it is like to be a president-elect．Chances are you can be one, too, and it won’t take more than 30 years’ efforts to achieve that．
A new computer game, Commander in Chief, offers the chance to step into the president’s shoes and see whether you can do a better job running the country than he can．
The video game will be available on January 20, the day Obama is sworn in （宣誓就职） as president．
So what will you do in the game?
Like Obama, your early task is to select members of the Cabinet（内阁）from 250 personality types．Then you immediately face internal（国内的）and external（对外的） challenges．Every decision you make has an in-game consequence．
“You can put your own political theories into action and see the domestic（国内的）and international effect,” said the lead designer Louis-Marie Rocques．
Internal decisions involve managing budgets, security, education, health care and discussion over many proposed laws．You also have to respond to critics．Every decision has a consequence, which changes the political environment．For example, raising taxes will raise criticisms and protests while lowering taxes means you will have less money to play with．
What about external decisions? Well, you have to deal with military issues, global economics, trade agreements, and spending time lobbying（游说）other presidents．You can determine the course of world events by invading（侵略）a neutral country, or toppling（推翻）an unfriendly country but then you must face the economic, political, and military consequences．
Don’t want to be president of the US? The game also lets you become virtual（虚拟的）leader of other countries including France, Germany, Spain and Russia．
68．The purpose of writing this passage is mainly to ．
A．show you how hard it is to be the newly-elected president, Barack Obama
B．explain why the video game is so popular among American citizens
C．introduce to you one special computer game, Commander in Chief
D．inform how designers developed the interesting computer game
69．Which of the following items belongs to internal affairs in the game?
A．Managing budgets, responding to critics and military issues．
B．Managing budgets, raising taxes and trade agreements．
C．Health care, discussing proposed laws and lowering taxes．
D．Education, security and lobbying other countries．
70．Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A．Those who want to be a president one day will get a taste of their private life．
B．The first task in the game is to form the Cabinet consisting of 250 members．
C．The video game has hit the stores in America and enjoys sales success．
D．Like a real president, the players will face challenges at home and abroad
Health experts have long worried about the increasing rate of obesity in kids. It’s an important concern: Being weight or obese during childhood can lead to serious problems normally seen in adults, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Poor diets and a lack of exercise are usually the causes. But would you ever have imagined there might be a connection between the bacteria that lived in your guts （内脏）when you were a baby and the chance that you would become overweight?
Scientists in Finland recently found just such a link. In a recent study, they showed that overweight kids had different species of bacteria living in their guts.
You probably think of bacteria only as germs that can make you sick. While it’s true that some bacteria can make people ill, your body actually depends on some types of bacteria to help you digest food and extract nutrients from it. These “good” bacteria live in your guts, where they process the food you eat.
Human babies get these bacterial helpers from their moms. When a baby is born, some of the bacteria in the mother move into the baby’s body. Growing babies get additional “good” bacteria from the milk their mothers produce. And it turns out the bacteria might play an important role in regulating weight just six years later.
So how could these bacteria affect weight? The researchers still haven’t tested that question, but future tests might lead to an answer.The “link” in Paragraph 2 refers to the relationship between _______.
| A．bacteria and the chance of being overweight |
| B．obesity and diabetes |
| C．diets and the chance of being overweight |
| D．bacteria and exercise |
Which of the following is NOT the function of “good” bacteria?
| A．Helping to digest food. |
| B．Helping to take nutrients from food. |
| C．Helping to regulate weight. |
| D．Making a person ill. |
The purpose of writing this passage is to _______.
| A．introduce the role of bacteria in children’s weight |
| B．analyze the influence of obesity on kids |
| C．give advice on how to lose weight quickly |
| D．explain the function of bacteria in foods |
A month after Hurricane Katrina, I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house, reduced to waist-high rains, smelly and dirty.
Before the trip, I’d had my car fixed. When the office employee of the garage was writing up the bill, she noticed my Louisiana license plate. “You from New Orleans?” she asked. I said I was, “No charge.” She said, and firmly shook her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a haircut, and the same thing happened.
As my wife was studying in Florida, we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we could afford while also paying off a mortgage(抵押贷款) on our ruined house. We looked at many places, but none was satisfactory. We’d began to accept that we’d have to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a while, when I got a very curious e-mail from a James Kemmedy in California. He’d read some pieces I’d written about our sufferings for state, the online magazine and wanted to give us (“no conditions attached”) a new house across the lake from New Orleans. It sounded a good to her return, but I replied, thinking him for his exceptional generosity, then we to go back. Then the University of Florida offered to let him house to me. While he want to England on his one year, paid leave. The rent was rather reasonable. I mentioned the poet’s offer to James Kemdedy, and the next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months.
Throughout this painful experience, the kindness of strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It’s almost worth losing you wordy possessions to be reminded that people really when given had a channel. The garage employee’s attitude toward the author was that of .
| A．unconcern | B．sympathy | C．doubt | D．tolerance |
What do we know about James Kemnedy?
A．He was a written of an online magazine |
| B．He was a poet at the University of Florida |
| C．He offered the author a new house free of charge. |
| D．He learned about the author’s sufferings. |
It can be inferred from the text that .
| A．the author’s family was in financial difficulty |
| B．rents were comparatively reasonable despite the disaster |
| C．houses were difficult to find in the hurricane stricken area |
| D．the mortgage on the ruined house was paid off by the bank |
The author learned from his experience that .
| A．wordy possessions can be given up when necessary |
| B．generosity should be encouraged in some cases |
| C．people benefit from their sad stories |
| D．human beings are kind after all. |
Which would be the best title for the text?
| A．Terrible Hurricane Katrina. |
| B．Hurricane Is Heartless While Strangers Are Kind. |
| C．Study in Florida. |
| D．The Importance of Helping Others. |
I entered high school having read hundreds of books. But I was not a good reader. Merely bookish, I lacked a point of view when I read. Rather, I read in order to get a point of view. I searched books for good expressions and sayings, pieces of information, ideas, themes—anything to enrich my thought and make me feel educated. When one of my teachers suggested to his sleepy tenth-grade English class that a person could not have a “complicated idea” until he had read at least two thousand books, I heard the words without recognizing either its irony (嘲讽) or its very complicated truth. I merely determined to make a list of all the books I had ever read. Strict with myself, I included only once a title I might have read several times. (How, after all, could one read a book more than once?) And I included only those books over a hundred pages in length. (Could anything shorter be a book?)
There was yet another high school list I made. One day I came across a newspaper article about an English professor at a nearby state college. The article had a list of the “hundred most important books of Western Civilization.” “More than anything else in my life,” the professor told the reporter with finality , “these books have made me all that I am.” That was the kind of words I couldn’t ignore. I kept the list for the several months it took me to read all of the titles. Most books, of course, I hardly understood. While reading Plato's The Republic, for example, I needed to keep looking at the introduction of the book to remind myself what the text was about. However, with the special patience and superstition (迷信) of a schoolboy, I looked at every word of the text. And by me time I reached the last word, pleased, I persuaded myself that I had read The Republic, and seriously crossed Plato off my list
On heating the teacher's suggestion of reading, the writer thought _______.
| A．one must read as many books as possible |
| B．a student should not have a complicated idea |
| C．it was impossible for one to read two thousand books |
| D．students ought to make a list of the books they had read |
While at high school, the writer _______.
| A．had plans for reading | B．learned to educate himself |
| C．only read books over 100 pages | D．read only one book several times |
The underlined phrase “with finality” probably means _______.
| A．firmly | B．clearly | C．proudly | D．pleasantly |
The writer's purpose in mentioning The Republic is to _______.
| A．explain why it was included in the list |
| B．describe why he seriously crossed it off the list |
| C．show that he read the books blindly though they were hard to understand |
| D．prove that he understood most of it because he had looked at every word |
The writer provides two book lists to _______.
| A．show how he developed his point of view |
| B．tell his reading experience at high school |
C．introduce the two persons' reading methods  |
| D．explain that he read many books at high school |
It was a winter morning, just a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005. While most people were warming up their cars, Trevor, my husband, had to get up early to ride his bike four kilometers away from home to work. On arrival, he parked his bike outside the back door as he usually does. After putting in 10 hours of labor, he returned to find his bike gone.
The bike, a black Kona 18 speed, was our only transport. Trevor used it to get to work, putting in 60-hour weeks to support his young family. And the bike was also used to get groceries(食品杂货)，saving us from having to walk long distances from where we live.
I was so sad that someone would steal our bike that I wrote to the newspaper and told them our story. Shortly after that, several people in our area offered to help. One wonderful stranger even bought a bike, then called my husband to pick it up. Once again my husband had a way to get to and from his job. It really is an honor that a complete stranger would go out of their way for someone they have never met before. People say that a smile can be passed from one person to another, but acts of kindness from strangers are even more so. This experience has had a spreading effect in our lives because it strengthened our faith in humanity(人性) as a whole. And it has influenced us to be more mindful of ways we, too, can share with others. No matter how big or how small, an act of kindness shows that someone cares. And the results can be everlasting. Why was the bike so important to the couple?
| A．The man’s job was bike racing. | B．It was their only possession. |
| C．It was a nice Kona 18 speed. | D．They used it for work and daily life. |
We can infer from the text that _______
| A．the couple worked 60 hours a week. | B．people were busy before Christmas |
| C．the stranger brought over the bike | D．life was hard for the young family. |
How did people get to know the couple’s problem?
| A．From radio broadcasts. | B．From a newspaper. |
| C．From TV news. | D．From a stranger. |
Which of the following is TRUE?
| A．The author’s husband often parked the bike beside the back door. |
| B．The author used to get to work by bike. |
| C．Several strangers offered bikes to them, but they only accepted one of them. |
| D．Somebody had stolen their bike before, but soon returned it to the author. |
What do the couple learn from their experience?
| A．Strangers are usually of little help. | B．One should take care of their bike. |
| C．News reports make people famous. | D．An act of kindness can mean a lot. |
The literal meaning of philosophy is “love of wisdom”. But this meaning does not tell us very much. Unlike the other disciplines, philosophy cannot be defined by what you study, because it si actually unlimited. Anything can be the subject matter of philosophy: are, history, law, language, literature, mathematics, and in fact, the other academic disciplines are directly related to philosophy. For this reason you get a Doctorate（博士学位）of Philosophy (Ph. D. ) in biochemistry, or computer science, or psychology
Two broad sub-fields of philosophy are logic and the history of philosophy. Logic is the science of argument and critical thinking. It provides sound methods for distinguishing good from bad reasonign. The history of philosophy involves the study of major philosophers and periods in the development of philosophy.
Of what use is philosophy? First it is useful in educational advancement. It is necessary for understanding other disciplines. Only philosophy questions the nature of the concepts used in a discipline, and its relation to other disciplines. And through the study of philosophy, one develops sound methods of research and analysis that can be applied to any field.
There are a number of general uses of philosophy. It strengthens one’s ability to solve problems, to communicate, to organize ideas and issues, to persuade, and to take what is the most important from a large quantity of data. These general uses are of great benefit in the career field, not necessarily for obtaining one’s first job after graduation, but for preparing for positions of responsibility, management and leadership later on. It is very short-sighted after all, to take a course of studies only for the purpose of getting one’s first job. The useful skills developed through the study of philosophy have significant long-term benefits in career advancement. No other discipline systematically follows the ideals of wisdom, leadership, and capacity to resolve human conflict
According to paragraph 1, philosophy can best be described as the study of .
A. social sciences B. natural sciences
C. both social and natural sciences D. the subject matter of politics
What does “discipline” mean in the first paragraph?
A. subject B. science C. literature D. occupation
With the study of philosophy, you can .
A. become a great leader
B. succeed in everything
C. find a good job soon after graduation
D. make progress in your career development
According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. Philosophy is an independent discipline.
B. Logic helps you to become a better thinker.
C. The study of philosophy brings you immediate benefits.
D. The meaning of philosophy is too limited to define.
From the passage, we can conclude .
A. not all the subjects have to do with philosophy
B. a person will get a Ph. D. if he/she studies philosophy
C. philosophy can be helpful for the study of any other subjects
D. philosophy is the only solution to all the problems in the world