Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner nine days ago has already created a debate over politics, the press and humor. Now, a commercial rivalry has broken out over its rebroadcast.On Wednesday, C-Span, the nonprofit network that first showed Mr. Colbert’s speech, wrote letters to the video sites YouTube.com and ifilm.com, demanding that the clips of the speech be taken off their Web sites. The action was a first for C-Span, whose prime-time schedule tends to feature events like Congressional hearings on auto fuel-economy standards."We have had other hot—I hate to use that word—videos that generated a lot of buzz," said Rob Kennedy, executive vice president of C-Span, which was founded in 1979. "But this is the first time it has occurred since the advent of the video clipping sites."After the clips of Mr. Colbert’s performance were ordered taken down at You Tube—where 41 clips of the speech had been viewed a total of 2.7 million times in less than 48 hours, according to the site—there were rumblings on left-wing sites that someone was trying to silence a man who dared to speak truth to power.But as became clear later in the week. this was a business decision, not a political one. Not only is the entire event available to be streamed at C-Span’s Web site. c-span, org, but the network is selling DVD’s of the event for $24.95, including speeches and a comedy routine by President Bush with a President Bush imitator.And C-Span gave permission to Google Videos to carry the Colbert speech beginning Friday. The arrangement, which came with the stipulation that Google Videos provide the entire event and a clip of Mr. Bush’s entire routine as well, is a one-time deal. Peter Chane, senior product manager of Google Video, said "C-Span has some very, very unique content," adding that "online is really great distribution outlet".But Julie Supan, senior director for marketing at YouTube, said officials there were stung by C-Span’s behavior, because, she said, the site had helped fuel momentum for the Colbert clip."This was an exciting moment for them in a viral, random way," she said. "To take it down from one site and uploding on another, it is perplexing." C-span’s prime-time schedule is usually about()
A. political events
B. entertainment routine
C. economical events
D. None of the above
During its formative years, the inner solar system was a rough-and-tumble place. There were a couple of hundred large objects flying around. Moon-size or bigger, and for millions of years they collided with one another. Out of these impacts grew the terrestrial planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth with its Moon, and Mars—and the asteroids.Scientists have thought of these collisions as mergers: a smaller object (the impactor) hits a larger one (the target) and sticks to it. But new computer modeling by Erik Asphaug and Craig B. Agnor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows that things weren’t that simple. "Most of the time, the impactor and the target go off on their merry ways," Dr. Asphaug said. About half the collisions are these hit-and-nm affairs. Now the two researchers and a colleague, Quentin Williams. have done simulations to study the effects of these collisions on the impactors. They are not pretty."The impactors suffer all kinds of fates," Dr. Asphaug said. They undergo tremendous shearing and gravitational forces that can cause them to fracture into smaller pieces or melt, causing chemical changes in the material and loss of water or other volatile compounds. Or the crust and cover can be stripped off. leaving just an embryonic iron core.The researchers, whose findings are published in Nature, discovered that two objects did not even have to collide to create an effect on the smaller one. from the gravitational forces of a near-collision. During the simulations. Dr. Asphaug said, "We’d look and say, ’Gosh, we just got rid of the whole atmosphere of that planetoid: it didn’t even hit and it sucked the whole atmosphere off.’"The researchers suggest that the remains of these beaten-up, fractured and melted objects can be found in the asteroid belt. Dr. Asphaug said that could explain the prevalence of "iron relics" in the belt. Some of these planetoid remnants also eventually hit Earth: that would help explain why certain meteorites lack water and other volatile elements.The hit-and-run collision model also provides an explanation for Vesta. a large asteroid with an intact crust and cover. How did Vesta keep its cover while so many other objects were losing theirs Dr. Asphang said it could be that Vesta was always the target, never the impactor, and was thus less affected. "It just had to avoid being the hitter," he said, "until bigger objects left the system." In the last sentence of the second paragraph, "they" refers to()
A. the researchers
B. the collisions
C. the simulations
D. the impactors
Questions 22 to 25 are based on the conversation you have just heard.
A. Money is important.
B. Responsibility means more than salary.
C. High salary secures better performance.
D. Future income is more important than starting salary.
For those who regard the al-Jazeera TV channel as a biased, anti-western mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, the announcement that it will start broadcasting 24 hours a day in English next year will be unwelcome. Its likeliest audience is Muslims (1) the Middle East who do not speak Arabic. Will al-Jazeera’s reports of suffering and rage in Iraq and beyond inspire anger (2) America and its (3) at home, tooThe new service may prove a bit less (4) than its Arabic sibling. Nigel Parsons, its managing editor, says that al-Jazeera has been too strident on (5) in the past, and that the English channel will (6) to redress that. It will strive (7) balance, credibility and authority, he says, and it will signal a new maturity for al-Jazeera, which was started by the emir of Qatar in 1996.It will broadcast its own original content—news, documentaries and talk shows— (8) studios in Doha, London and Washington, (9) international news beyond the Middle East. especially the developing countries often (10) by existing English-language channels.A1-Jazeera is already enjoying a fresh burst of (11) outside the Middle East. Around the same time that the interim government in Iraq ordered it to shut its bureau in Baghdad, westerners started watching "Control Room," a film sympathetic (12) the station directed by Jehane Noujaim. At a screening in London last week an audience of local journalists laughed along (13) al-Jazeera’s reporters and editors (14) the (15) of the American military.The biggest mystery about al-Jazeera surround its funding, which "Control Room" sadly did not (16) . Qatar has a new (17) in the world (18) to the station. That may be why the emir is willing to spend (19) an English-language channel even (20) the original Arabic one is probably losing money. Read the following text. Choose the best word (s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on ANSWER SHEET 1.6()
A. seek
B. look
C. aim
D. search