In 1992, I had just launched a new business called Video News International.
It was the world's first video journalist network. The idea was to cover news and sell the service to news organizations.
One day, a young intern (实习生) who was working for us named Anthony Lappe pulled me aside.
"There is something you have to see," he told me. "Comcast is doing this really cool thing."
"What?"
"The Internet," he said. "It's going to be really big."
Anthony later introduced me to the head of the Internet project.
"We are looking for content to put on our network here," the guy said to me.
Well, I said I had lots of content to offer.
The guy's eyes lit up. "Cool," he said. "We would like to put it on our network."
Well, I was always looking for new clients.
"What are you going to pay?" I asked.
He said that they could not pay anything for the content, but they would set up a URL for me.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's kind of like your address on the web."
"What would I do with this URL thing?"
"Well, it could be your business."
"I don't see how it is a business, and there's not even any advertising," I cleverly replied.
"Not yet," he said. "But one day there might be."
I thought about it for two seconds.
"Naah..." I said. "I've got bigger fish to fry. I've got to be going now. Maybe we can cooperate next time."
And I walked out.
Idiot!
Well, that Internet thing turned out to be so much bigger than I had thought. I wish I had never made such a mistake. Sorry Anthony. You were right.The head of the Internet project expected the author to _______.
| A．become a user of their product |
| B．put advertisements on their web |
| C．provide video news for their network |
| D．get an email address from the Internet |
The guy's offer was rejected because the author ______
| A．didn't think it a good deal |
| B．was unwilling to trust a stranger |
| C．was too occupied to start a new business |
| D．was worried about the safety of e-business |
What does the underlined sentence mean?
| A．I don't believe your words. |
| B．I ought to cook dinner now. |
| C．I need to get more payment. |
| D．I have something more important to do. |
Which of the following can be the best title for this text?
| A．Power of New Technology |
| B．Never Too Old to Learn |
| C．My Biggest Mistake Ever |
| D．Building a Business Partnership |
I remember the first time that I was extremely happy. I was about 8 years old when for the first time, there was a computer in the classroom. I remember that my teacher allowed each student to take turns to play various educational games on the computer. One day, I found the source code(编码) for one of these games. Without knowing or being taught any programming language, I was able to figure out some of the BASIC code. I just gave myself an infinite number of lives in the game, so I could continue playing it forever. This was also my first introduction to algebra, and I didn't even know it at the time. This was a decisive moment in my life. I was quite excited because of what I was learning and what I was able to do. As a result, I was enthusiastic for the rest of my life about self learning and computers, and I was quite happy doing them too.
I've noticed that people who are truly content with life are enthusiastic about what they do. This enthusiasm, along with good health, is the key to being happy. It also leads to self-confidence and content in life too. It may also lead to success, wealth, and achievements.
Success, wealth, or achievements can also bring some people happiness, yet I know plenty of rich people who are unhappy. I know many people with successful businesses that are not happy with what they are doing. I know people who continuously buy themselves new toys, such as cars, computers, and televisions, yet never seem content for too long. Please remember, happiness is the journey of life, not the destination.
The underlined word "infinite" means_______
| A．big | B．limitless |
| C．normal | D．small |
Planet Earth would be a scary place for humans if dinosaurs still ruled the world.
Though there are still some traces of life from the Jurassic Period, the Age of Dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago.
This mass extinction is believed to be the result of an asteriod（小行星）hitting Earth. A new report by the journal Biological Reviews called " The Extinction of Dinosaurs” concludes that this impact was, indeed, the cause of the dinosaurs’demise. But the space blast(爆炸) wasn't the only reason these creatures aren't still around today.
Dinosaurs need food to survive. Meat-eating monsters like the Tyrannosaurus Rex(霸王龙) were at the top of the food chain, and fed off plant eaters like the horned Triceratops (三角恐龙). These herbivores (食草动物) were decreasing in population after the asteroid hit Earth, which left the meat-eating species less food to survive on. “In any ecosystem where you remove links to key species, that community has problems," Richard Butler, one of the review's authors, told National Ceographic.
While the herbivore population was going down, Earth's temperatures were rising when volcanoes erupted. Hot vapors and gases began wiping out some of the dinosaur population and weakening the survivors.
These changes made the asteroid's impact especially powerful. It caused more volcanoes to erupt, heated up Earth's atmosphere, and led to a sharp drop in the level of oxygen in the oceans.
With the dinosaurs gone, mammals(哺乳动物) began to evolve into bigger and more diverse species. Many animals we see today, like birds, sharks, and even some cats and dogs, appeared after the asteroid hit Earth. But none rule Earth quite like the dinosaurs did..
Which of the following words can replace the underlined word“demise” in Paragraph 2?
| A．Death. | B．Evolvement. |
| C．Presence. | D．Decrease. |
You may not pay much attention to your daily elevator ride. Many of us use a lift several times during the day without really thinking about it. But Lee Gray, PhD, of the University of North Carolina, US, has made it his business to examine this overlooked form of public transport. He is known as the “Elevator Guy”.
“The lift becomes this interesting social space where etiquette（礼仪）is sort of strange,” Gray told the BBC. “They are socially very interesting but often very awkward places.”
We walk in and usually turn around to face the door. If someone else comes in, we may have to move. And here, according to Gray, liftusers unthinkingly go through a set pattern of movements. He told the BBC what he had observed.
He explained that when you are the only one inside a lift, you can do whatever you want – it’s your own little box.
If there are two of you, you go into different corners, standing diagonally（对角线地）across from each other to create distance.
When a third person enters, you will unconsciously form a triangle. And when there is a fourth person it becomes a square, with someone in every corner. A fifth person is probably going to have to stand in the middle.
New entrants to the lift will need to size up the situation when the doors slide open and then act decisively. Once in, for most people the rule is simple – look down, or look at your phone.
Why are we so awkward in lifts?
“You don’t have enough space,” Professor Babette Renneberg, a clinical psychologist at the Free University of Berlin, told the BBC. “Usually when we meet other people we have about an arm’s length of distance between us. And that’s not possible in most elevators.”
In such a small, enclosed space it becomes very important to act in a way that cannot be construed（理解）as threatening or strange. “The easiest way to do this is to avoid eye contact,” she said.
The underlined phrase “size up” in Paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to _______.
A. judge B. ignore
C. put up with D. make the best of
Scientists today are making greater effort to study ocean currents (洋流) . Most do it using satellites and other high-tech equipment. However, ocean expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer does it in a special way -- by studying movements of random floating garbage. A scientist with many years’ experience, he started this type of research in the early 1990s when he heard about hundreds of athletic shoes washing up on the shores of the northwest coast of the United States. There were so many shoes that people were setting up swap meets to try and match left and right shoes to sell or wear.
Ebbesmeyer found out in his researches that the shoes — about 60,000 in total — fell into the ocean in a shipping accident. He phoned the shoe company and asked if they wanted the shoes back. As expected, the company told him that they didn't. Ebbesmeyer realized this could be a great experiment. If he learned when and where the shoes went into the water and tracked where they landed, he could learn a lot about the patterns of ocean currents.
The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's best areas for beachcombing(海滩搜寻) because winds and currents join here, and as a result, there is a group of serious beachcombers in the area. Ebbesmeyer got to know a lot of them and asked for their help in collecting information about where the shoes landed. In a year he collected reliable information on 1, 600 shoes. With this data, he and a colleague were able to test and improve a computer program designed to model ocean currents, and publish the findings of their study.
As the result of his work, Ebbesmeyer has become known as the scientist to call with questions about any unusual objects found floating in the ocean. He has even started an association of beachcombers and ocean experts, with 500 subscribers from West Africa to New Zealand. They have recorded all lost objects ranging from potatoes to golf gloves.
The underlined phrase swap meets in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ______________.
| A．fitting rooms |
| B．trading fairs |
| C．business talks |
| D．group meetings |
（一）
Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband ,Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.
During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.
He reported the case to the police and then sat there，lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.
Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband’s name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）that had been left out on the footpath.
My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.
That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.
What does the underlined word “restored” in the last paragraph mean?
| A．Showed |
| B．Sent out |
| C．Delivered |
| D．Gave back |