Section Ⅱ Reading Comprehension

　　Part A

　　Directions：Read the following fourtexts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark youranswers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (40 points)

　　Text 1

　　Inthe 2006 film version of The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly, played byMeryl Streep, scold her unattractive assistant for imagining that high fashiondoesn’t affect her. Priestly explains how the deep blue color of the assistant’ssweater descended over the years from fashion shows to department stores and tothe bargain bin in which the poor girl doubtless found her garment。

　　Thistop-down conception of the fashion business couldn’t be more out of date or atodds with feverish world described in Overdressed, Elizabeth Cline’s three-yearindictment of “fast fashion”. In the last decades or so, advances in technologyhave allowed mass-market labels such as Zara, H&M, and Uniqlo to react totrends more quickly and anticipate demand more precisely. Quckier turnroundsmean less wasted inventory, more frequent releases, and more profit. Thoselabels encourage style-conscious consumers to see clothes as disposal—— meant to last only a wash or two, although they don’t advertisethat——and to renew their wardrobe every few weeks. Byoffering on-trend items at dirt-cheap prices, Cline argues, these brands havehijacked fashion cycles, shaking all industry long accustomed to a seasonalpace.

　　Thevictims of this revolution, of course, are not limited to designers. ForH&M to offer a 5.95 knit miniskirt in all its 2300-plus stores around theworld, it must rely on low-wage, overseas labor, order in volumes that strainnatural resources, and use massive amount of harmful chemicals。

　　Overdressedis the fashion world’s answer to consumer activist bestsellers like MichaelPollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Mass-produced clothing, like fast food, fillsa hunger and need, yet is non-durable, and wasteful,” Cline argues, Americans,she finds, buy roughly 20 billion garments a year——about 64items per person——and no matter how much they giveaway, this excess leads to waste。

　　Towardsthe end of Overdressed, Cline introduced her ideal, a Brooklyn woman named SKB,who, since 2008 has make all of her own clothes——andbeautifully. But as Cline is the first to note, it took Beaumont decades to perfect her craft; herexample, can’t be knocked off。

　　Thoughseveral fast-fashion companies have made efforts to curb their impact on laborand the environment——including H&M, withits green Conscious Collection Line——Cline believeslasting-change can only be effected by the customer. She exhibits the idealismcommon to many advocates of sustainability, be it in food or in energy. Vanityis a constant; people will only start shopping more sustainably when they can’tafford to it.

　　Text 2

　　An old saying has it that half ofall advertising budgets are wasted-the trouble is, no one knows which half . Inthe internet age, at least in theory ,this fraction can be much reduced . Bywatching what people search for, click on and say online, companies can aim “behavioural” ads at those most likely to buy。

　　In the past couple of weeks aquarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fine-grainedinformation: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked andsent behavioural ads? Or should they have explicit permission?

　　In December 2010 America'sFederal Trade Cornmission (FTC) proposed adding a "do not track"(DNT) option to internet browsers ,so that users could tell adwertisersthat they did not want to be followed .Microsoft's Internet Explorer andApple's Safari both offer DNT ;Google's Chrome is due to do so this year. InFebruary the FTC and Digltal Adwertising Alliance (DAA) agreed that theindustry would get cracking on responging to DNT requests.

　　On May 31st Microsoft Set off therow: It said that Internet Explorer 10,the version due to appear windows 8,would have DNT as a default.

　　It is not yet clear howadvertisers will respond. Geting a DNT signal does not oblige anyone to stoptracking, although some companies have promised to do so. Unable to tellwhether someone really objects to behavioural ads or whether they are stickingwith Microsoft’s default, some may ignore a DNT signal and press onanyway.

　　Also unclear is why Microsoft hasgone it alone. Atter all, it has an ad business too, which it says will complywith DNT requests, though it is still working out how. If it is trying to upsetGoogle, which relies almost wholly on default will become the norm. DNT doesnot seem an obviously huge selling point for windows 8-though the firm hascompared some of its other products favourably with Google's on that countbefore. Brendon Lynch, Microsoft's chief privacy officer, bloggde:"webelieve consumers should have more control." Could it really be thatsimple?

　　26. It is suggested in paragraph 1 that “behavioural” ads help advertisers to:

　　[A] ease competition among themselves

　　[B] lower their operational costs

　　[C] avoid complaints from consumers

　　[D]provide better online services

　　27. “The industry” (Line 6,Para.3)refers to:

　　[A] online advertisers

　　[B] e-commerce conductors

　　[C] digital information analysis

　　[D]internet browser developers

　　28. Bob Liodice holds that setting DNT as a default

　　[A] many cut the number of junk ads

　　[B] fails to affect the ad industry

　　[C] will not benefit consumers

　　[D]goes against human nature

　　29. which of the following is ture according to Paragraph.6?

　　[A] DNT may not serve its intended purpose

　　[B] Advertisers are willing to implement DNT

　　[C] DNT is losing its popularity among consumers

　　[D] Advertisers are obliged to offer behavioural ads

　　30. The author's attitude towards what Brendon Lynch said in his blog isone of:

　　[A] indulgence　　[B] understanding

　　[C] appreciaction　　[D] skepticism

　　Text 3

　　Up until a few decades ago, ourvisions of the future were largely - though by no means uniformly - glowinglypositive. Science and technology would cure all the ills of humanity, leadingto lives of fulfillment and opportunity for all.

　　Now utopia has grown unfashionable, as we havegained a deeper appreciation of the range of threats facing us, from asteroidstrike to epidemic flu and to climate change. You might even be tempted toassume that humanity has little future to look forward to.

　　But such gloominess is misplaced. The fossilrecord shows that many species have endured for millions of years - so whyshouldn't we? Take a broader look at our species' place in the universe, and itbecomes clear that we have an excellent chance of surviving for tens, if nothundreds, of thousands of years . Look up Homo sapiens in the "RedList" of threatened species of the International Union for theConversation of Nature (IUCN) ,and you will read: "Listed as Least Concernas the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, andthere are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline."

　　So what does our deep future hold? A growingnumber of researchers and organisations are now thinking seriously about thatquestion. For example, the Long Now Foundation has its flagship project amedical clock that is designed to still be marking time thousands of yearshence.

　　Perhaps willfully , it may be easier to thinkabout such lengthy timescales than about the more immediate future. Thepotential evolution of today's technology, and its social consequences, isdazzlingly complicated, and it's perhaps best left to science fiction writersand futurologists to explore the many possibilities we can envisage. That's onereason why we have launched Arc, a new publication dedicated tothe near future.

　　But take a longer view and there is a surprisingamount that we can say with considerable assurance. As so often, the past holdsthe key to the future: we have now identified enough of the long-term patternsshaping the history of the planet, and our species, to make evidence-basedforecasts about the situations in which our descendants will find themselves.

　　This long perspective makes the pessimistic viewof our prospects seem more likely to be a passing fad. To be sure, the futureis not all rosy. But we are now knowledgeable enough to reduce many of therisks that threatened the existence of earlier humans, and to improve the lotof those to come. 

     31. Our vision of the future used to be inspired by

　　[A] our desire for lives of fulfillment

　　[B] our faith in science and technology

　　[C] our awareness of potential risks

　　[D] our belief in equal opportunity

　　32. The IUCN’s “Red List” suggest that human being are

　　[A] a sustained species

　　[B] a threaten to the environment

　　[C] the world’s dominant power

　　[D] a misplaced race

　　33. Which of the following is true according to Paragraph 5?

　　[A] Arc helps limit the scope of futurological studies。

　　[B] Technology offers solutions to social problem。

　　[C] The interest in science fiction is on the rise。

　　[D] Our Immediate future is hard to conceive。

　　34. To ensure the future of mankind, it is crucial to

　　[A] explore our planet’s abundant resources

　　[B] adopt an optimistic view of the world

　　[C] draw on our experience from the past

　　[D] curb our ambition to reshape history

　　35. Which of the following would be the best title for thetext?

　　[A] Uncertainty about Our Future

　　[B] Evolution of the Human Species

　　[C] The Ever-bright Prospects of Mankind

　　[D] Science, Technology and Humanity

　　Text 4

　　On a five to three vote, theSupreme Court knocked out much of Arizona’s immigration law Monday-a modestpolicy victory for the Obama Administration. But on the more important matterof the Constitution,the decision was an 8-0 defeat for the Administration’s effort to upset the balance of power between the federal governmentand the states.

　　In Arizona v. United States, the majority overturned three ofthe four contested provisions of Arizona’s controversial plan to have state andlocal police enforce federal immigration law. The Constitutional principlesthat Washington alone has the power to “establish auniform Rule of Naturalization ”and that federal lawsprecede state laws are noncontroversial . Arizona had attempted to fashionstate policies that ran parallel to the existing federal ones.

　　Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts andthe Court’s liberals, ruled that the state flew too close to thefederal sun. On the overturned provisions the majority held the congress haddeliberately “occupied the field” and Arizona had thus intruded on the federal’s privileged powers。

　　However,the Justices said that Arizona police would be allowed to verifythe legal status of people who come in contact with law enforcement.That’s becauseCongress has always envisioned joint federal-state immigration enforcement andexplicitly encourages state officers to share information and cooperate withfederal colleagues。

　　Two of the three objectingJustice-Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas-agreed with this Constitutional logicbut disagreed about which Arizona rules conflicted with the federal statute.Theonly major objection came from Justice Antonin Scalia,who offered an even morerobust defense of state privileges going back to the alien and Sedition Acts。

　　The 8-0 objection to PresidentObama turns on what Justice Samuel Alito describes in his objection as “a shockingassertion assertion of federal executive power”.TheWhite House argued that Arizona’s laws conflicted withits enforcement priorities,even if state laws complied with federal statutes tothe letter.In effect, the White House claimed that it could invalidate anyotherwise legitimate state law that it disagrees with 。

　　Some powers do belong exclusivelyto the federal government, and control of citizenship and the borders is amongthem. But if Congress wanted to prevent states from using their own resourcesto check immigration status, it could. It never did so. The administration wasin essence asserting that because it didn’t want to carry out Congress’s immigration wishes, no state should be allowed to do so either.Every Justice rightly rejected this remarkable claim。

　　36. Three provisions of Arizona’s plan were overturned because they

　　[A] deprived the federal police of Constitutional powers。

　　[B] disturbed the power balance between different states。

　　[C] overstepped the authority of federal immigration law。

　　[D] contradicted both the federal and state policies。

　　37. On which of the following did the Justices agree,according toParagraph4?

　　[A] Federal officers’ duty to withhold immigrants’information。

　　[B] States’ independence from federal immigration law。

　　[C] States’ legitimate role in immigration enforcement。

　　[D] Congress’s intervention in immigration enforcement。

　　38. It can be inferred from Paragraph 5 that the Alien andSedition Acts

　　[A] violated the Constitution。

　　[B] undermined the states’ interests。

　　[C] supported the federal statute。

　　[D] stood in favor of the states。

　　39. The White House claims that its power of enforcement

　　[A] outweighs that held by the states。

　　[B] is dependent on the states’ support。

　　[C] is established by federal statutes。

　　[D] rarely goes against state laws。

　　40. What can be learned from the last paragraph?

　　[A] Immigration issues are usually decided by Congress。

　　[B] Justices intended to check the power of the Administrstion。

　　[C] Justices wanted to strengthen its coordination with Congress。

　　[D] The Administration is dominant over immigration issues.