发布时间 : 星期一 文章无锡市第一中学2月月考更新完毕开始阅读acf3d91a9ec3d5bbfc0a74d7
environment-friendly business. People can also learn how to cook healthier foods and teach others how to prepare meals. On a recent day, Philip Sidibe demonstrated his cooking skills. He prepared Aloco, a popular food in Cameroon where he grew up. He and other young people not only cook their food, but also grow it in a large garden.
Tameka Barbour-Gaskins lives in Autumn Woods. She says her whole family is eating healthier meals because of the local produce. ―I like junk food. I like quick meals. It’s not easy to just go from eating a certain way all your life to switching over to being healthier… With the urban garden here, with my son learning, he can help me switch around my style of eating. I want a healthy family.‖
Margaret says the urban garden is an agent for change and the young people are its newest supporters. ―Our program is about planting seeds. It’s about planting seeds not just in the ground, but in other human beings so that the movement can grow and it’s really exciting because these young people will be working with us throughout the year to help plan the actual farm and to finally own it.‖
56. We learn from the passage that Eco City Farms ____. A. provides a lot of job opportunities B. was founded by an expert in farming
C. helps the community lead a healthy lifestyle D. has turned most city lots into farms in the USA
57. The underlined word ―ailments‖ in Paragraph 3 probably means ―____‖. A. diseases B. foods C. materials D. programs
B
The highest beef prices in almost three decades have arrived just before the start of the hot season, causing a great shock to both consumers and restaurant owners – and relief isn’t likely anytime soon. A decreasing number of cattle and growing export demand from countries such as China and Japan have caused the average price of fresh beef to climb to $5.28 a pound in February, up almost a quarter from January and the highest price since 1987.
―Everything that’s produced is being consumed,‖ said Kevin Good, an analyst at CattleFax, a Colorado-based information group. Prices will likely stay high for a couple of years as cattle producers start to rebuild their cattle among big questions about whether the Southwest and parts of the Midwest will see enough rain to water the grass.
―I quit buying steaks a while ago when the price went up,‖ said 59-year-old Len Markham, who works at Texas Tech. She says she limits red meat purchases to hamburger, choosing chicken, pork and fish instead.
Restaurant owners, too, must deal with the high prices. Mark Hutchens, owner of the 50 Yard Line Steakhouse in Lubbock, raised his menu prices for beef items by about 5 percent in November. Since then, the owner of the small eating house has tried to make cuts elsewhere to avoid passing it on to customers. ―It really puts more pressure on the small guys,‖ he said of non-chain restaurants. ―I just think you have to stay competitive and keep your costs low.‖
―White-tablecloth restaurants have adjusted the size of their steaks, making them thinner‖,
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says Jim Robb, director of the Colorado-based Livestock Marketing Information Center. ―And fast-food restaurants are cutting costs by reducing the number of menu items and are offering other meat options, including turkey burgers‖, Robb said. ―Chain restaurants also try to buy beef as much as they can, which essentially gives them a discount‖, Iowa State University assistant economics professor Lee Schulz said.
The high prices are welcome news for at least one group: ranchers (大农场经营者), especially those in Texas who for years have struggled because of drought (干旱) and high feed prices. But even as ranchers breathe a sigh of relief, some worry lasting high prices will cause consumers to permanently change their buying habits – switching to chicken or pork. Pete Bonds, a 62-year-old Texas rancher and president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, said that’s a big concern. ―But such fears may be unfounded,‖ Robb said. ―Three years ago, economists thought consumers would start looking for substitutions for beef as the drought spread. We’re surprised we haven’t seen more of that,‖ he said.
South Dakota rancher Chuck O’Connor thinks that consumers won’t abandon beef for good. ―I’m sure some are maybe going to cut back some, but to say that people aren’t going to buy it anymore, I don’t think that’s going to happen,‖ he said, adding, ―I hope not.‖ 58. The price of beef has increased because _____.
A. there is a growing demand for fresh beef among Americans B. cattle producers have succeeded in raising a new type of cattle C. there is a lack of rain and the export of beef is increasing D. ranchers have found ways to deal with high feed prices
59. Which method is NOT used by restaurant owners to deal with the high beef prices? A. They have made the steaks smaller than before. B. They have increased the prices of beef-related dishes. C. They have made hamburgers with many other kinds of meat. D. They have sought discount by purchasing large amounts of beef. 60. Jim Robb gives an example in the sixth paragraph in order to ______. A. tell people that it is a tough job to look for substitutions for beef B. show his fear that chicken or pork may be an alternative to beef C. explain that customers won’t change their buying habits completely D. indicate that ranchers may be least affected by the high beef prices
C
Before I became rich, I assumed rich people just looked out the windows of their Hollywood Hills homes, eating delicious popcorn and congratulating themselves on being smart enough to go into the profitable field of journalism. But it turns out there’s a lot of guilt involved. Sure, most of the time I’m jealous of the 3% of Americans who make more money than I do. But sometimes I feel bad for the 97%. And I want everyone to know I feel bad.
So when I read Bruce McCall and David Letterman’s terrific new book, This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me), I was deeply jealous. Not because the jokes and drawings that tease one-percenters are great (a 36-hole golf course built in the Sahara, an Olympic-size bath
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powered by its own nuclear plant). I was jealous because McCall and Letterman were rich people who had figured out how to seem like they cared about income inequality and got paid to do it.
I too want people to know that I think it’s unsustainable for 1% of Americans to have over 35% of the wealth, while 80% have just 11%. Yet few people know this part of me. I should make more of an effort, like millionaires Russell Simmons, Alec Baldwin and Kanye West did when they visited Occupy Wall Street. So I called McCall, whom I’ve known for a long time. But when I called him for advice on how rich guys like us should show people how much we hate rich guys like us, McCall informed me that he’s not a rich guy, adding that he started lower middle class and a high school dropout.
Deny, deny, deny.
As to what I should actually do, I sought advice from Jack, a rich friend who created a foundation to help fight income inequality. He told me that giving away my money wouldn’t change anything, which I thought was just another way the 1% make fun of how little money we three-percenters have. He advised me to work on basic problems instead of calling people hypocrites (伪君子). In other words: Write columns that no one will read. The only income inequality that is going to solve is mine.
61. After the author got rich, he realized being rich has brought him a sense of . A. guilt
B. pride
C. fairness
D. jealousy D. Favorable.
62. What is the author’s attitude towards Bruce McCall and David Letterman? A. Envious.
B. Grateful.
C. Doubtful.
63. As to removing income inequality, . A. McCall and Jack are concerned B. McCall is more concerned than Jack C. McCall and Jack have similar ideas D. McCall is more of a hypocrite than Jack
64. Which of the following solutions to income inequality does the author probably approve of? A. Writing good columns.
D
Should literary criticism be an art or a science? If you’re an English major, what should you study: the unusual group of writers who happen to interest you (art), or literary history and theory (science)? If you’re an English professor, how should you spend your time: producing ―readings‖ of the literary works that you care about (art), or looking for the patterns that shape whole literary forms or periods (science)? Almost no one wants to answer the question definitively, because, for a critic, alternating between one’s artistic and scientific nature is fun--- it’s like switching between the ocean and the sun at the beach.
Franco Moretti, a professor at Stanford, whose essay collection ―Distant Reading‖ just won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, fascinates critics in large part because he does want to answer the question definitively. He thinks that literary criticism ought to be a science. In 2005, in a book called“Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History”,
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B. Giving up some money.
D. Setting up a charitable foundation.
C. Depending on the government.
he used computer-generated visualizations to map, among other things, the emergence of new genres（文学类型）. In 2010, he founded the Stanford Literary Lab, which is dedicated to analyzing literature with software. The basic idea in Moretti’s work is that, if you really want to understand literature, you can’t just read a few books or poems over and over. Instead, you have to work with hundreds or even thousands of texts at a time. By turning those books into data, analyzing and comparing those data, you can discover facts about literature in general.
The week before last, Stanford announced that undergraduates would be able to enroll (注册)for“joint majors”combining computer science with either English or music. Yet Moretti has critics. They point out that, so far, the results of his investigations have been either wrong or unexciting. (A typical Moretti finding is that, in eighteenth-century Britain, for instance, the titles of novels grew shorter as the market for novels grew larger.) And yet these sorts of objections haven’t dimmed the enthusiasm for Moretti’s work. That’s because, no matter how Moretti’s individual research projects turn out, his method, in itself, makes a meaningful statement. It pushes critics to rethink what they do.
The numbers and charts shown in Moretti’s analyses make you see literature differently --- as something vast, social, and impersonal that is perhaps best approached in a statistical way. The grandeur (壮观) of an expanded scale gives Moretti’s work aesthetic (审美）power. (It plays a larger role in his appeal, I suspect, than most Morettians would like to admit.) What’s the point of continuing to interpret individual books --- especially books that have already been interpreted over and over? Interpreters, Moretti writes, ―have already said what they had to.‖ Better to focus on ―the laws of literary history‖--- on explanation, rather than interpretation.
All this sounds self-serious. It isn’t. For all his techno-futurism, Moretti can seem old- fashioned in his eagerness to uncover hidden patterns and structures within culture. In some ways, the book’s receiving an award reflects the role that Moretti has played in securing a permanent seat at the table for a new critical paradigm --- something that happens only rarely.
Even so, my guess is that, while many critics will admire Moretti, relatively few will follow him. The technical skills are learnable; English majors can take computer-science courses. But the sacrifices, intellectually and, as it were, artistically, are too great. In ordinary literary criticism --- the kind that splits the difference between art and science --- there is a give-and-take between the general and the particular. Your circle back from theory to text; you compromise science with art. But Moretti’s criticism doesn’t work that way. Generality is the whole point. By the end of his journey, Moretti may be able to see all of literature, but he’ll see it as an astronaut on Mars might see the Earth: from afar, with no way home.
65. According to the first paragraph, the author thinks the question ―Should literary criticism be an art or a science?‖ seems ______. A. worth thinking about B. ridiculous C. difficult to answer D. theoretical 66. Which of the following does Franco Moretti most probably agree with?
A. Critics should not only appreciate literature but also analyze the texts with critical theories. B. A critic must use computer software to analyze the text he/she is reading.
C. Critics should be able to conclude the general rules of literature by comparison. D. A critic should have an understanding of the general rules of literature.
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