The Nobel Prize in economics had a difficult birth. It was created in 1969 to mimic the five prizes initiated under Alfred Nobel’s will. These had already been around for 68 years, and purists fought hard to stop the newcomer. Some members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences still dismiss economics as unscientific, and its prize as not a proper Nobel. Early winners were among the prize’s fiercest critics. Gunnar Myrdal, who shared the award in 1974, said the prize ought to be abolished (but he did not return the money). Milton Friedman, winner in 1976, doubted the ability of a few people in Stockholm to make decisions respected around the world. By the 1990s, the Nobel committee had gained a reputation for intransigence. Gary Becker won only after a flood of nominations forced the cabal in Stockholm to act. The fathers of game theory won only after Mr. Nash’s sudden recovery from paranoid schizophrenia, though the disease had no bearing on the quality of his work, the best of which was done before he became ill. Robert Lucas received a prize that many economists believed he should have had much earlier. In 1998, the prize became the subject of countless jokes after the collapse of Long-term Capital Management, a hedge fund firm whose founders included Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, the 1997 Nobel laureates. The Merton Scholes’ choice also highlighted another enduring problem with the prize: untimely deaths. Fischer Black, co-originator of the options pricing model for which Messrs Merton and Scholes were recognized, died a year too soon to join his collaborators on the podium. Last year, many economists hoped that Zvi Griliches, a noted econometrician who was unquestionably deserving of the prize, and was suffering from a long illness, would win. He did not, and died soon afterwards. Because the prize came into being so late, there are still elderly luminaries waiting to be recognized. Paul Samuelson, one of the younger winners, and Mr. Becker, who was a friend of Griliches, want the committee to take old age explicitly into account. The committee could also cast its net more widely across the profession. ①Almost ail, the laureates(戴桂冠的人)are also the theoreticians; advances in empirical work and applications in the past two decades have yet to be paid due respect," a fact bemoaned by Mr. Becker. ②Mr. Samuelson adds that the economics committee’s selection methods have. excessively mimicked those used for the prizes in natural sciences: It" the right apple fell on your head, and you saw it, then you got the prize. But if you had a lifetime of excellence in all branches of physics, you didn’t get it.\ We can learn from the passage that among the winners of the Nobel Prize in economics in the 1990s,
A. Gary Becker won the prize after he forced the committee to act
B. Mr. Nash’s illness delayed his receiving of the prize
C. Robert Lucas received the prize earlier than expected
D. Robert Merton and Myron Scholes played jokes on the prize
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Do you really have to ask Open your eyes. The problem isn’t that the next mass murderer may be sitting right next to you, sleeping in your house, eating at your table, giving you every signal of desperation a person can give. The problem is you don’t want to see it. How else could a child become a psychologically twisted and emotionally alienated mass murderer, unnoticed by everyone Nobody gets that far gone without anyone noticing. We all recognize behavior that raises our concern. We all know when someone is exceeding just weird. We see it happening and yet we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We go to movies filled with violent portrayals of ourselves more as animals than as humans. We know it is the wrong message, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We watch television shows that portray us as vapid, meaningless cretins (白痴) incapable of intelligence or kindness. We know it is the wrong message, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We clap our hands and stamp our feet to the beat of songs whose lyrics would, if we saw them written on a piece of paper, scare the hell out of us. We know it is the wrong message, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We trust movie stars whom we have confused with their movie roles when they tell us that owning handguns is patriotic. We know handguns serve only one purpose--to rid human beings of their lives, but we ignore it, because if we don’t, we’ll have to take responsibility for doing something about it. We read books that tell us discipline equals love. So we demonstrate our "love" by suffocating (使窒息) our kids with a million rules and regulations. Instead of respecting them as individuals, we control them. Instead of getting to know them, we criticize everything they say and do. Instead of loving them unconditionally, we judge them. Children who are loved and respected are not emotionally alienated. Children who are loved and respected do not murder people. As parents, teachers, and human beings, we are responsible for the messages we send, the violence we condone(宽恕), and the children we raise. Which of the following could be learned from the passage
A. Children seem contented with the way they are treated.
B. Celebrities are permitted to possess weapons.
C. Apathy attitudes cultivate lonely youngsters.
Defamed characters are banned in mass medi
The relational database model requires the data be (110) through programs that don’t rely on the position of the data in the database. This is in direct (111) to the other database mode, where the program has to follow a series of pointers to the data it seeks. A program (112) a relational database simply asks for the data it seeks; the DBMS performs the necessary searches and (113) the information. The (114) on how the search is done are specific to the DBMS and vary from product to product. (113)是()
A. erases
B. provides
C. proves
D. values
Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm Should we not rather encourage many ways for self-respecting people to work Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they live. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and families to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes. It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded--a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs. Which of the following is suggested as a possible means to cope with the current situation
A. Treat employment as the norm.
B. Help people to manage without full-time jobs.
C. Find suitable jobs for everyone.
D. Accept the fact of unemployment.
A big focus of the criticism of computer games has concerned the content of the games being played. When the narratives of the games are analyzed they can be seen to fall into some genres. The two genres most popular with the children I interviewed were "Platformers" and "Beat-them-ups". Platform games such as Sonic and Super Mario involve leaping from platform to platform, avoiding obstacles, moving on through the levels, and progressing through the different stages of the game. Beat-them- ups are the games which have caused concern over their violent content. These games involve fights between animated characters. In many ways this violence can be compared to violence within children’s cartoons where a character is hit over the head or falls off a cliff but walks away unscathed. Controversy has occurred in part because of the intensity of the game play, which is said to spill over into children’s everyday lives. There are worries that children are becoming more violent and aggressive after prolonged exposure to these games. Playing computer games involves feelings of intense frustration and anger which often expresses itself in aggressive "yells" at the screen. It is not only the "Beat-them- up" games which produce this aggression, platform games are just as frustrating when the characters lose all their "lives" and "die" just before the end of the level is reached. Computer gaming relies upon intense concentration on the moving images on the screen and demands great hand-to-eye coordination. When the player loses and the words "Game over" appear on the screen, there is annoyance and frustration at being beaten by the computer and at having made an error. This anger and aggression could perhaps be compared to the aggression felt when playing football and you take your eye off the ball and enable the opposition to score. The annoyance experienced when defeated at a computer game is what makes gaming addictive: the player is determined not to make the same mistake again and to have "one last go" in the hope of doing better next time. Some of the concern over the violence of computer games has been about children who are unable to tell the difference between fiction and reality and who act out the violent moves of the games in fight on the playground. The problem with video games is that they involve children more than television or films and this means there are more implications for their social behavior. Playing these games can lead to anti-social behavior, make children aggressive and affect their emotional stability. According to the author, why do video games lead to violence more than TV or movies
A. Because children cannot tell fiction from reality.
Because children like to act out the scenes in the games on the playground.
C. Because computer games involve children more than TV or films.
D. Because computer games can produce more anti-social behavior.