It is said that in England death is pressing, in Canada inevitable and in California optional Small wonder. Americans' life expectancy has nearly doubled over the past century. Failing hips can be replaced, clinical depression controlled, cataracts removed in a 30-minuts surgical procedure. Such advances offer the aging population a quality of life that was unimaginable when I entered medicine 50 years ago. But not even a great health-care system can cure death—and our failure to confront that reality now threatens this greatness of ours.
Death is normal; we are genetically programmed to disintegrate and perish, even under ideal conditions. We all understand that at some level, yet as medical consumers we treat death as a problem to be solved. Shielded by third-party payers from the cost of our care, we demand everything that can possibly be done for us, even if it's useless. The most obvious example is late-stage cancer care. Physicians—frustrated by their inability to cure the disease and fearing loss of hope in the patient—too often offer aggressive treatment far beyond what is scientifically justified.
In 1950, the U.S. spent 7 billion on health care. In 2002, the cost will be one hundred billion. Anyone can see this trend is unsustainable. Yet few seem willing to try to reverse it. Some scholars conclude that a government with finite resources should simply stop paying for medical care that sustains life beyond a certain age—say 83 or so. Former Colorado governor Richard Lamm has been quoted as saying that the old and infirm "have a duty to die and get out of the way", so that younger, healthier people can realize their potential.
I would not go that far. Energetic people now routinely work through their 60s and beyond, and remain dazzlingly productive. At 78, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone jokingly claims to be 53. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is in her 70s, and former surgeon general C.Everett Koop chairs an Internet start-up in his 80s. These leaders are living proof that prevention works and that we can manage the health problems that come naturally with age. As a mere 68-year-old, I wish to age as productively as they have.
Yet there are limits to what a society can spend in this pursuit. Ask a physician, I know the most costly and dramatic measures may be ineffective and painful. I also know that people in Japan and Sweden, countries that spend far less on medical care, have achieved longer, healthier lives than we have. As a nation, we may be overfunding the quest for unlikely cures while underfunding research on humbler therapies that could improve people's lives.
1. What is implied in the first sentence?
A. Americans are better prepared for death than other people.
B. Americans enjoy a higher life quality than ever before.
C. Americans are over-confident of their medical technology.
D. Americans take a vain pride in their long life expectancy.
2. The author uses the example of caner patients to show that .
A. medical resources are often wasted
B. doctors are helpless against fatal diseases
C. some treatments are too aggressive
D. medical costs are becoming unaffordable
3. The author's attitude toward Richard Lamm's remark is one of .
A. strong disapproval
B. reserved consent
C. slight contempt
D. enthusiastic support
4. In contrast to the U.S., Japan and Sweden are funding their medical care .
A. more flexibly
B. more extravagantly
C. more cautiously
D. more reasonably
5. The text intends to express the idea that .
A. medicine will further prolong people's lives
B. life beyond a certain limit is not worth living
C. death should be accepted as a fact of life
D. excessive demands increase the cost of health care
參考答案：CABDC Early in the age of affluence (富裕) that followed World War II, an American retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... .We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
Americans have responded to Lebow's call, and much of the world has followed.
Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is even embedded in social values. Opinion surveys in the world's two largest economies—Japan and the United States—show consumerist definitions of success becoming ever more prevalent.
Overconsumption by the world's fortunate is an environmental problem unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth. Their surging exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests, soils, water, air and climate.
Ironically, high consumption may be a mixed blessing in human terms, too. The time-honored values of integrity of character, good work, friendship, family and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches.
Thus many in the industrial lands have a sense that their world of plenty is somehow hollow—that, misled by a consumerist culture, they have been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social, psychological and spiritual needs with material things.
Of course, the opposite of overconsumption—poverty—is no solution to either environmental or human problems. It is infinitely worse for people and bad for the natural world too. Dispossessed (被剝奪得一無所有的) peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, and hungry nomads (游牧民族) turn their herds out onto fragile African grassland, reducing it to desert.
If environmental destruction results when people have either too little or too much, we are left to wonder how much is enough. What level of consumption can the earth support? When does having more cease to add noticeably to human satisfaction?
1. The emergence of the affluent society after World War II .
A. led to the reform of the retailing system
B. resulted in the worship of consumerism
C. gave rise to the dominance of the new egoism
D. gave birth to a new generation of upper class consumers
2. Apart from enormous productivity, another important impetus to high consumption is______.
A. the people's desire for a rise in their living standards
B. the concept that one's success is measured by how much they consume
C. the imbalance that has existed between production and consumption
D. the conversion of the sale of goods into rituals
3. Why does the author say high consumption is a mixed blessing?
A. Because poverty still exists in an affluent society.
B. Because overconsumption won't last long due to unrestricted population growth.
C. Because traditional rituals are often neglected in the process of modernization.
D. Because moral values are sacrificed in pursuit of material satisfaction.
4. According to the passage, consumerist culture .
A. will not alleviate poverty in wealthy countries
B. will not aggravate environmental problems
C. cannot thrive on a fragile economy
D. cannot satisfy human spiritual needs
5. It can be inferred from the passage that .
A. human spiritual needs should match material affluence
B. whether high consumption should be encouraged is still an issue
C. how to keep consumption at a reasonable level remains a problem
D. there is never an end to satisfying people's material needs 參考答案：BBDDC If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses.
Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses' convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. "Who is that?" the new arrival asked St. Peter. "On, that's God," came the reply, "but sometimes he thinks he's a doctor."
If you are part of the group which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it'll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman's notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn't attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system.
If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it's the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark.
Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote "If at first you don't succeed, give up" or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.
1. To make your humor work, you should .
A. take advantage of different kinds of audience
B. make fun of the disorganized people
C. address different problems to different people
D. show sympathy for your listeners
2. The joke about doctors implies that, in the eyes of nurses, they are .
A. impolite to new arrivals
B. very conscious of their godlike role
C. entitled to some privileges
D. very busy even during lunch hours
3. It can be inferred from the text that public services .
A. have benefited many people
B. are the focus of public attention
C. are an inappropriate subject for humor
D. have often been the laughing stock
4. To achieve the desired result, humorous stories should be delivered .
A. in well-worded language
B. as awkwardly as possible
C. in exaggerated statements
D. as casually as possible
5. The best title for the text may be .
A. Use Humor Effectively
B. Various Kinds of Humor
C. Add Humor to Speech
D. Different Humor Strategies
參考答案：CBDDA It is said that the public and Congressional concern about deceptive (欺騙性的) packaging rumpus (喧囂) started because Senator Hart discovered that the boxes of cereals consumed by him, Mrs. Hart, and their children were becoming higher and narrower, with a decline of net weight from 12 to 10-1/2 ounces, without any reduction in price. There were still twelve biscuits, but they had been reduced in size. Later, the Senator rightly complained of a store- bought pie in a handsomely illustrated box that pictured, in a single slice, almost as many cherries as there were in the whole pie. The manufacturer who increases the unit
price of his product by changing his package size to lower the quantity delivered can, without undue hardship, put his product into boxes, bags, and tins that will contain even 4-ounce, 8-ounce, one-pound, two-pound quantities of breakfast foods, cake mixes, etc. A study of drugstore (雜貨店) and supermarket shelves will convince any observer that all possible sizes and shapes of boxes, jars, bottles, and tins are in use at the same time, and, as the package journals show, week by week, there is never any hesitation in introducing a new size and shape of box or bottle when it aids in product differentiation. The producers of packaged products argue strongly against changing sizes of packages to contain even weights and volumes, but no one in the trade comments unfavorably on the huge costs incurred by endless changes of package sizes, materials, shape, art work, and net weights that are used for improving a product's market position.
When a packaging expert explained that he was able to multiply the price of hard sweets by 2.5, from $1 to $ 2.50 by changing to a fancy jar, or that he had made a 5-ounce bottle look as though it held 8 ounces, he was in effect telling the public that packaging can be a very expensive luxury. It evidently does come high, when an average family pays about $ 200 a year for bottles, cans, boxes, jars and other containers, most of which can't be used for anything but stuffing the garbage can.
1. What started the public and Congressional concern about deceptive packaging rumpus?
A. Consumers' complaints about the changes in package size.
B. Expensive packaging for poor quality products.
C. A senator's discovery of the tricks in packaging.
D. The rise in the unit price for many products.
2. The word "undue" (Line 2, Para. 2) means " ".
A. improper
C. unexpected
B. adequate
D. excessive
3. Consumers are concerned about the changes in package size, mainly because .
A. they hate to see any changes in things they are familiar with
B. the unit price for a product often rises as a result
C. they have to pay for the cost of changing package sizes
D. this entails an increase in the cost of packaging
4. According to this passage, various types of packaging come into existence to .
A. meet the needs of consumers
C. enhance the market position of products
B. suit all kinds of products
D. introduce new products
5. The author is critical mainly of .
A. dishonest packaging
B. inferior packaging
C. the changes in package size
D. exaggerated illustrations on packages
參考答案：CDBCA
Death is normal; we are genetically programmed to disintegrate and perish, even under ideal conditions. We all understand that at some level, yet as medical consumers we treat death as a problem to be solved. Shielded by third-party payers from the cost of our care, we demand everything that can possibly be done for us, even if it's useless. The most obvious example is late-stage cancer care. Physicians—frustrated by their inability to cure the disease and fearing loss of hope in the patient—too often offer aggressive treatment far beyond what is scientifically justified.
In 1950, the U.S. spent 7 billion on health care. In 2002, the cost will be one hundred billion. Anyone can see this trend is unsustainable. Yet few seem willing to try to reverse it. Some scholars conclude that a government with finite resources should simply stop paying for medical care that sustains life beyond a certain age—say 83 or so. Former Colorado governor Richard Lamm has been quoted as saying that the old and infirm "have a duty to die and get out of the way", so that younger, healthier people can realize their potential.
I would not go that far. Energetic people now routinely work through their 60s and beyond, and remain dazzlingly productive. At 78, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone jokingly claims to be 53. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is in her 70s, and former surgeon general C.Everett Koop chairs an Internet start-up in his 80s. These leaders are living proof that prevention works and that we can manage the health problems that come naturally with age. As a mere 68-year-old, I wish to age as productively as they have.
Yet there are limits to what a society can spend in this pursuit. Ask a physician, I know the most costly and dramatic measures may be ineffective and painful. I also know that people in Japan and Sweden, countries that spend far less on medical care, have achieved longer, healthier lives than we have. As a nation, we may be overfunding the quest for unlikely cures while underfunding research on humbler therapies that could improve people's lives.
1. What is implied in the first sentence?
A. Americans are better prepared for death than other people.
B. Americans enjoy a higher life quality than ever before.
C. Americans are over-confident of their medical technology.
D. Americans take a vain pride in their long life expectancy.
2. The author uses the example of caner patients to show that .
A. medical resources are often wasted
B. doctors are helpless against fatal diseases
C. some treatments are too aggressive
D. medical costs are becoming unaffordable
3. The author's attitude toward Richard Lamm's remark is one of .
A. strong disapproval
B. reserved consent
C. slight contempt
D. enthusiastic support
4. In contrast to the U.S., Japan and Sweden are funding their medical care .
A. more flexibly
B. more extravagantly
C. more cautiously
D. more reasonably
5. The text intends to express the idea that .
A. medicine will further prolong people's lives
B. life beyond a certain limit is not worth living
C. death should be accepted as a fact of life
D. excessive demands increase the cost of health care
參考答案：CABDC Early in the age of affluence (富裕) that followed World War II, an American retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... .We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
Americans have responded to Lebow's call, and much of the world has followed.
Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is even embedded in social values. Opinion surveys in the world's two largest economies—Japan and the United States—show consumerist definitions of success becoming ever more prevalent.
Overconsumption by the world's fortunate is an environmental problem unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth. Their surging exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests, soils, water, air and climate.
Ironically, high consumption may be a mixed blessing in human terms, too. The time-honored values of integrity of character, good work, friendship, family and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches.
Thus many in the industrial lands have a sense that their world of plenty is somehow hollow—that, misled by a consumerist culture, they have been fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social, psychological and spiritual needs with material things.
Of course, the opposite of overconsumption—poverty—is no solution to either environmental or human problems. It is infinitely worse for people and bad for the natural world too. Dispossessed (被剝奪得一無所有的) peasants slash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of Latin America, and hungry nomads (游牧民族) turn their herds out onto fragile African grassland, reducing it to desert.
If environmental destruction results when people have either too little or too much, we are left to wonder how much is enough. What level of consumption can the earth support? When does having more cease to add noticeably to human satisfaction?
1. The emergence of the affluent society after World War II .
A. led to the reform of the retailing system
B. resulted in the worship of consumerism
C. gave rise to the dominance of the new egoism
D. gave birth to a new generation of upper class consumers
2. Apart from enormous productivity, another important impetus to high consumption is______.
A. the people's desire for a rise in their living standards
B. the concept that one's success is measured by how much they consume
C. the imbalance that has existed between production and consumption
D. the conversion of the sale of goods into rituals
3. Why does the author say high consumption is a mixed blessing?
A. Because poverty still exists in an affluent society.
B. Because overconsumption won't last long due to unrestricted population growth.
C. Because traditional rituals are often neglected in the process of modernization.
D. Because moral values are sacrificed in pursuit of material satisfaction.
4. According to the passage, consumerist culture .
A. will not alleviate poverty in wealthy countries
B. will not aggravate environmental problems
C. cannot thrive on a fragile economy
D. cannot satisfy human spiritual needs
5. It can be inferred from the passage that .
A. human spiritual needs should match material affluence
B. whether high consumption should be encouraged is still an issue
C. how to keep consumption at a reasonable level remains a problem
D. there is never an end to satisfying people's material needs 參考答案：BBDDC If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses.
Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses' convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. "Who is that?" the new arrival asked St. Peter. "On, that's God," came the reply, "but sometimes he thinks he's a doctor."
If you are part of the group which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it'll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman's notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn't attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system.
If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it's the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark.
Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote "If at first you don't succeed, give up" or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.
1. To make your humor work, you should .
A. take advantage of different kinds of audience
B. make fun of the disorganized people
C. address different problems to different people
D. show sympathy for your listeners
2. The joke about doctors implies that, in the eyes of nurses, they are .
A. impolite to new arrivals
B. very conscious of their godlike role
C. entitled to some privileges
D. very busy even during lunch hours
3. It can be inferred from the text that public services .
A. have benefited many people
B. are the focus of public attention
C. are an inappropriate subject for humor
D. have often been the laughing stock
4. To achieve the desired result, humorous stories should be delivered .
A. in well-worded language
B. as awkwardly as possible
C. in exaggerated statements
D. as casually as possible
5. The best title for the text may be .
A. Use Humor Effectively
B. Various Kinds of Humor
C. Add Humor to Speech
D. Different Humor Strategies
參考答案：CBDDA It is said that the public and Congressional concern about deceptive (欺騙性的) packaging rumpus (喧囂) started because Senator Hart discovered that the boxes of cereals consumed by him, Mrs. Hart, and their children were becoming higher and narrower, with a decline of net weight from 12 to 10-1/2 ounces, without any reduction in price. There were still twelve biscuits, but they had been reduced in size. Later, the Senator rightly complained of a store- bought pie in a handsomely illustrated box that pictured, in a single slice, almost as many cherries as there were in the whole pie. The manufacturer who increases the unit
price of his product by changing his package size to lower the quantity delivered can, without undue hardship, put his product into boxes, bags, and tins that will contain even 4-ounce, 8-ounce, one-pound, two-pound quantities of breakfast foods, cake mixes, etc. A study of drugstore (雜貨店) and supermarket shelves will convince any observer that all possible sizes and shapes of boxes, jars, bottles, and tins are in use at the same time, and, as the package journals show, week by week, there is never any hesitation in introducing a new size and shape of box or bottle when it aids in product differentiation. The producers of packaged products argue strongly against changing sizes of packages to contain even weights and volumes, but no one in the trade comments unfavorably on the huge costs incurred by endless changes of package sizes, materials, shape, art work, and net weights that are used for improving a product's market position.
When a packaging expert explained that he was able to multiply the price of hard sweets by 2.5, from $1 to $ 2.50 by changing to a fancy jar, or that he had made a 5-ounce bottle look as though it held 8 ounces, he was in effect telling the public that packaging can be a very expensive luxury. It evidently does come high, when an average family pays about $ 200 a year for bottles, cans, boxes, jars and other containers, most of which can't be used for anything but stuffing the garbage can.
1. What started the public and Congressional concern about deceptive packaging rumpus?
A. Consumers' complaints about the changes in package size.
B. Expensive packaging for poor quality products.
C. A senator's discovery of the tricks in packaging.
D. The rise in the unit price for many products.
2. The word "undue" (Line 2, Para. 2) means " ".
A. improper
C. unexpected
B. adequate
D. excessive
3. Consumers are concerned about the changes in package size, mainly because .
A. they hate to see any changes in things they are familiar with
B. the unit price for a product often rises as a result
C. they have to pay for the cost of changing package sizes
D. this entails an increase in the cost of packaging
4. According to this passage, various types of packaging come into existence to .
A. meet the needs of consumers
C. enhance the market position of products
B. suit all kinds of products
D. introduce new products
5. The author is critical mainly of .
A. dishonest packaging
B. inferior packaging
C. the changes in package size
D. exaggerated illustrations on packages
參考答案：CDBCA