In 2012, America will still be the place where the future happens first, for that is the nation’s oldest tradition. The early Puritans lived in almost Stone Age conditions, but they were inspired by visions of future glories, God’s kingdom on earth. The early pioneers would sometimes travel past perfectly good farmland, because they were convinced that even more amazing land could be found over the next ridge. The Founding Fathers took t 3 scraggly Colonies and believed they were creating a new nation on earth. The railroad speculators envisioned magnificent fortunes built on bands of iron. This future-mindedness explains many modem features of American life. It explains workaholism: the average American works 350 hours a year more than the average European. Americans move more, in search of that brighter tomorrow, than people in other lands. They also, sadly, divorce more, for the same reason. Americans adopt new technologies such as online shopping and credit cards much more quickly than people in other countries. Forty-five percent of world Internet use takes place in the United States. Even today, after the bursting of the stock-market bubble, American venture-capital firms--which are in the business of betting on the future--dwarf the firms from all other nations. Future-mindedness contributes to the disorder in American life, the obliviousness to history, the high rates of family breakdown, the frenzied waste of natural resources. It also leads to incredible innovation. According to the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, 75 percent of the Noble laureates in economics and the sciences over recent decades have lived or worked in the United States. One in 12 Americans has enjoyed the thrill and challenge of starting his own business. A study published in the Journal of International Business Studies in 2000 showed that innovative people are spread pretty evenly throughout the globe, but Americans are most comfortable with risk. If the 1990s were a great decade of future-mindedness, we are now in the midst of a season of experience. It seems cooler to be skeptical, to pooh-pooh all those IPO suckers who lost their money betting on the telecom future. By 2012, this period of chastisement(惩罚) will likely have run its course, and future-mindedness will be back in vogue, for better or worse. We don’t know exactly what the next future-minded frenzy will look like. We do know where it will take place: the American suburb. In 1979, three quarters of American office space were located in central cities. The new companies, research centers and entrepreneurs are flocking to these low buildings near airports, highways and the Wal-Mart mails, and they are creating a new kind of suburban life. We are now approaching a moment in which the majority of American office space, and the hub of American entrepreneurship, will be found in quiet office parks in places like Rockville, Maryland, and in the sprawling suburbosphere around Atlanta. We also know that future-mindedness itself will become the object of greater study. We are discovering that there are many things that human beings do easily that computers can do only with great difficulty, if at all. Cognitive scientists are now trying to decode the human imagination, to understand how the brain visualizes, dreams and creates. And we know, too, that where there is future-mindedness there is hope. The word "pooh-pooh" in the fourth paragraph means ______.
A. appreciate
B. praise
C. shun
D. ridicule
Perhaps only a small boy training to be a wizard at the Hogwarts School of magic could cast a spell so powerful as to create the biggest book launch ever. Wherever in the world the clock strikes midnight on June 20th, his followers will flock to get their paws on one of more than 10m copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Bookshops will open in the middle of the night and delivery firms are drafting in extra staff and bigger trucks. Related toys, games, DVDs and other merchandise will be everywhere. There will he no escaping Potter mania. Yet Mr. Potter’s world is a curious one, in which things are often not what they appear. While an excitable media (here by including The Economist, happy to support such a fine example of globalization)is helping to hype the launch of J.K. Rowling’s fifth novel, about the most adventurous thing that the publishers (Scholastic in America and Britain’s Bloomsbury)have organized is a reading by Ms.Rowling in London’s Royal Albert Hall to be broadcast as a live web cast. Hollywood, which owns everything else to do with Harry Potter, says it is doing even less. Incredible as it may seem, the guardians of the brand say that, to protect the Potter franchise, they are trying to maintain a low profile, well, relatively low. Ms. Rowling signed a contract in 1998 with Warner Brothers, part of AOL Time Warner, giving the studio exclusive film, licensing and merchandising rights in return for what now appears to have been a steal: some $500,000. Globally, the first four Harry Potter books have sold some 200m copies in 55 languages; the two movies have grossed over $1.8 billion at the box office. This is a stunning success by any measure, especially as Ms. Rowling has long demanded that Harry Potter should not be over-commercialized. In line with her wishes, Warner says it is being extraordinarily careful, at least by Hollywood standards, about what it licenses and to whom. It imposed tough conditions on Coca-Cola, insisting that no Harry Potter images should appear on cans, and is now in the process of making its licensing programme even more restrictive. Coke may soon be considered too mass market to carry the brand at all. The deal with Warner ties much of the merchandising to the films alone. There are no officially sanctioned products relating to Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix; nor yet for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the film of the third book, which is due out in June 2004. "Warner agrees that Ms. Rowling’s creation is a different sort of commercial property, one with long-term potential that could be damaged by a typical Hollywood marketing blitz," says Diane Nelson, the studio’s global brand manager for Harry Potter. "It is vital," she adds, "that with more to come, readers of the books are not alienated. The evidence from our market research is that enthusiasm for the property by fans is not waning.\ Paragraph 5 intends mainly to show Warner’s ______.
A. determination to promote Potter
B. consistence in conducting business
C. high regard for Ms. Rowling’s request
D. careful restrictions on licensing to Coca-Cola
American dramas and sitcoms (连续剧) would have been candidates for prime time several years ago. But today those programs--though some remain popular- increasingly occupy fringe times slots on foreign networks. Instead, a growing number of shows produced by local broadcasters are on the air at the best times. The shift counters longstanding assumptions that TV shows produced in the United States would continue to overshadow locally produced shows from Singapore to Sicily. The changes are coming at a time when the influence of the United States on_ international affairs has chafed (使恼火) friends and foes, and some people are expressing relief that at least on television American culture is no longer quite the force it once was. "There has always been a concern that the image of the world would be shaped too much by American culture," said Dr. Jo Groebek, director general of the European Institute for the Media, a non-profit group. Given the choice, he adds, foreign viewers often prefer homegrown shows that better reflect local tastes, cultures and historical events. Unlike in the United States, commercial broadcasting in most regions of the world--including Asia, Europe and a lesser extent Latin American, which has a long history of commercial TV--is a relatively recent development. A majority of broadcasters in many countries were either state-owned or state- subsidized for much of the last century. Governments began to relax their control in the 1980’s by privatizing national broadcasters and granting licenses to dozens of new commercial networks. The rise of cable and satellite pay-television increased the spectrum of channels. Relatively inexperienced and often financed on a shoestring, these new commercial stations needed hours of programming fast. The cheapest and easiest way to fill airtime was to buy shows from American studios, and the bidding wars for popular shows were fierce. The big American studios took advantage of that demand by raising prices and forcing foreign broadcasters to buy less popular programs if they wanted access to the best-selling shows and movies. "The studios priced themselves out of prime time," said Harry Evans Sloan, chairman of SBS Broadcasting, a Pan-European broadcaster. Mr. Sloan estimates that over the last decade, the price &American programs has increased fivefold even as the international ratings for these shows have declined. American broadcasters are still the biggest buyers of American-made television shows, accounting for 90% of the $25 billion in 2001 sales. But international sales which totaled $2.5 billion last year often make the difference between a profit and a loss on a show. As the pace of foreign sales slows--the market is now growing at 5% a year, down from the double-digit growth of the 1990’s--studio executives are rethinking production costs. The phrase "on a shoestring" (Line 1, Par
A. 6) most probably means ______.A. after a fashionB. on second thoughtsC. in need of capitalD. in the interests of themselves
The mental health movement in the United States began with a period of considerable enlightenment.①Dorothea Dix was shocked to find the mentally ill in jails and almshouses(养老院)and crusaded for the establishment of asylums in whish people could receive humane care in hospital like environments and treatment which might help restore them to sanity.By the mid 1800s,20 states had established asylums, but during the late 1800s and early 1900s,in the face of economic depression, legislatures were unable to appropriate sufficient funds for decent care.Asylums became overcrowded and prison like. Additionally, patients were more resistant to treatment than the pioneers in the mental health field had anticipated, and security and restraint were needed to protect patients and others. Mental institutions became frightening and depressing places in which the rights of patients were all but forgotten. These conditions continued until after World War Ⅱ. ②At that time, new treatments were discovered for some major mental illnesses theretofore considered untreatable(penicillin for syphilis of the brain and insulin treatment for schizophrenia) and depressions), and a succession of books, motion pictures, and newspaper exposes called attention to the plight of the mentally ill. Improvements were made and Dr. David Vail’s Humane Practices Program is a beacon for today. But changes were slow in coming until the early 1960s. ③At that time, the Civil Rights movement led lawyers to investigate America’s prisons, which were disproportionately populated by blacks, and they in turn followed prisoners into the only institutions that were worse than the prisons--the hospital for the criminally insane . The prisons were filled with angry young men that, encouraged by legal support, were quick to demand their rights. ④The hospital for the criminally insane, by contrast, were populated with people who were considered "crazy" and who were often kept obediently in their place through the use of severe bodily restraints and large doses of major tranquilizers, The young cadre (骨 干) of public interest lawyers liked their role in the mental hospitals. The lawyers found a population that was both passive and easy to champion. These were, after all, people who, unlike criminals, had done nothing wrong. And in many states, they were being kept in horrendous institutions, an injustice, which once exposed, was bound to shock the public and, particularly, the judicial conscience. Patients’ rights groups successfully encouraged reform by lobbying in state legislatures. Judicial interventions have had some definite positive effects, but there is growing awareness that courts cannot provide the standards and the review mechanisms that assure good patient care. ⑤The details of providing day-to-day care simply cannot be mandated by a court, so it is time to take from the courts the responsibility for delivery of mental health care and assurance of patient right and return it to the state mental health administrators to whom the mandate was originally given. Though it is a difficult task, administrators must undertake to write roles and standards and to provide the training and surveillance (监督) to assure that treatment is given and patient rights are respected. It can be inferred from the passage that, had the Civil Rights movement not prompted an investigation of prison conditions, ______.
A. states would never have established asylums for the mentally ill
B. new treatments for major mental illness would have likely remained untested
C. the Civil Rights movement in America would have been politically ineffective
D. conditions in mental hospitals might have escaped judicial scrutiny