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.\ Mr. Samuelson thinks that the economics committee’s selection methods are ______.
A. questionable
B. perfect
C. useful
D. necessary
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In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men looting a sabotaged train. One of the looters, Chief Auda abu Tayi of the Howe tat clan, suddenly notices the camera and snatches it. "Am I in this" he asks, before smashing it open. To the dismayed reporter, Lawrence explains, "He thinks these things will steal his virtue. He thinks you’re a kind of thief." As soon as colonizers and explorers began taking cameras into distant lands, stories began circulating about how indigenous peoples saw them as tools for black magic. The "ignorant natives" may have had a point. When photography first became available, scientists welcomed it as a more objective way of recording faraway societies than early travelers’ exaggerated accounts. But in some ways, anthropological photographs reveal more about the culture that holds the camera than the one that stares back. Up into the 1950s and 1960s, many ethnographers sought "pure" pictures of "primitive" cultures, routinely deleting modem accoutrements such as clocks and Western dress. They paid men and women to re-enact rituals or to pose as members of war or hunting parties, often with little regard for veracity. Edward Curtis, the legendary photographer of North American Indians, for example, got one Makah man to pose as a whaler with a spear in 1915--even though the Makah had not hunted whales in a generation. These photographs reinforced widely accepted stereotypes that indigenous cultures were isolated, primitive, and unchanging. For instance, National Geographic magazine’s photographs have taught millions of Americans about other cultures. As Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins point out in their 1993 book Reading National Geographic, the magazine since its founding in 1888 has kept a tradition of presenting beautiful photos that don’t challenge white, middle-class American conventions. While dark-skinned women can be shown without tops, for example, white women’s breasts are taboo. Photos that could unsettle or disturb such. as areas of the world torn asunder by war or famine, are discarded in favor of those that reassure, to conform with the society’s stated pledge to present only "kindly" visions of foreign societies. The result, Lutz and Collins say, is the depiction of "an idealized and exotic world relatively free of pain or class conflict". Lutz actually likes National Geographic a lot. She read the magazine as a child, and its lush imagery influenced her eventual choice of anthropology as a career. She just thinks that as people look at the photographs of other cultures, they should be alert to the choice of composition and images. The author mentions the movie Lawrence of Arabia to ______.
A. show how people in the indigenous societies are portrayed by Westerners
B. illustrate how people from primitive societies see cameras as tools of black magic that steal their virtues
C. show how anthropologists portray untruthful pictures of native people
D. show the cruel and barbarian side of the native people
In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, one scene shows an American newspaper reporter eagerly snapping photos of men looting a sabotaged train. One of the looters, Chief Auda abu Tayi of the Howe tat clan, suddenly notices the camera and snatches it. "Am I in this" he asks, before smashing it open. To the dismayed reporter, Lawrence explains, "He thinks these things will steal his virtue. He thinks you’re a kind of thief." As soon as colonizers and explorers began taking cameras into distant lands, stories began circulating about how indigenous peoples saw them as tools for black magic. The "ignorant natives" may have had a point. When photography first became available, scientists welcomed it as a more objective way of recording faraway societies than early travelers’ exaggerated accounts. But in some ways, anthropological photographs reveal more about the culture that holds the camera than the one that stares back. Up into the 1950s and 1960s, many ethnographers sought "pure" pictures of "primitive" cultures, routinely deleting modem accoutrements such as clocks and Western dress. They paid men and women to re-enact rituals or to pose as members of war or hunting parties, often with little regard for veracity. Edward Curtis, the legendary photographer of North American Indians, for example, got one Makah man to pose as a whaler with a spear in 1915--even though the Makah had not hunted whales in a generation. These photographs reinforced widely accepted stereotypes that indigenous cultures were isolated, primitive, and unchanging. For instance, National Geographic magazine’s photographs have taught millions of Americans about other cultures. As Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins point out in their 1993 book Reading National Geographic, the magazine since its founding in 1888 has kept a tradition of presenting beautiful photos that don’t challenge white, middle-class American conventions. While dark-skinned women can be shown without tops, for example, white women’s breasts are taboo. Photos that could unsettle or disturb such. as areas of the world torn asunder by war or famine, are discarded in favor of those that reassure, to conform with the society’s stated pledge to present only "kindly" visions of foreign societies. The result, Lutz and Collins say, is the depiction of "an idealized and exotic world relatively free of pain or class conflict". Lutz actually likes National Geographic a lot. She read the magazine as a child, and its lush imagery influenced her eventual choice of anthropology as a career. She just thinks that as people look at the photographs of other cultures, they should be alert to the choice of composition and images. The main idea of the passage is ______.
A. photographs taken by Western explorers reflect more Westerners’ perception of the indigenous cultures and the Western values
B. there is a complicated relationship between the Western explorers and the primitive peoples
C. popular magazines should show pictures of the exotic and idealized worlds to maintain high sales
D. anthropologists ask the natives to pose for their pictures, compromising the truthfulness of their pictures
European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP). Will it be enough to kick start the Doha world trade negotiations On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken-- the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut--that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cutting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world. It subsidizes European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices (主办) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU’s intransigence(不让步), and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September. when the world’s trade ministers meet in Cancùn, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg--up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light to the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These let-outs are potentially damaging for Europe’s negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. More generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim. Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the skeptics’ fears. The new package of measures is inevitably a complicated one due to ______.
A. European negotiators’ loss of confidence
B. high expenditure on farm support
C. escape clauses for some European countries
D. suspicion of the new package
A sign that Hispanics will dominate California’s future is that a university study has found the ethnic accounted for nearly half of all births in the state by the end of the last decade. Hispanic mothers had 247,796 of the 521,265 children born in California in 1998, or 47.5 percent, according to the University of California at Los Angeles study released in December 2001. Non-Hispanic Whites had 33.9 percent, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders with 10.7 percent. Blacks represented 6.8 percent of births and American Indians had 0.5 percent of all births. California’s future economic health depends upon those Hispanics, who soon will be the majority of young adults and hence the working force, says David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA. The study, based on state health department statistics, confirms the ethnic shift that made 2001 the year California officially lost its White majority. The U.S. Census showed that Hispanics made up nearly a third while non-Hispanic Whites slipped to less than half of the state’s total population of 33.9 million. California’s experience is part of a "sea change" in the United States, where 23 states already have Hispanics as their largest ethnic minority. Dr. Harry Pachon says, "Hispanics are becoming more prominent in everything from movies to politics, and that is good for the state. If there was no penetration of social and political institutions, then you would have an isolated minority and that’s a recipe for social unrest. On the other hand, by the third generation, one of every two Hispanics have married outside of their ethnic group. There’s a Latinization of America but there’s also an Americanization of Latinos. By third generation, a lot of them are losing their Spanish; they prefer American NFL to soccer." Overall, nearly 65 percent of all Hispanic mothers were immigrants, ranking them second to Asian and Pacific Islanders at more than 84 percent. The babies tend to grow up healthy as well. Studies have shown that at virtually all stages of life, Hispanics, at least in California, Arizona and Texas, tended to suffer fewer major health problems, such as heart attacks, cancer and strokes, than other ethnic groups, Hayes-Bautista noted. Only about 15 percent of Hispanic mothers were 19 years old or younger. By comparison, nearly 17 percent of Blacks and 19 percent of American Indians were teenagers. Non-Hispanic Whites had a figure of nearly 7 percent. What can be inferred from the last paragraph
A. Nearly all Hispanic mothers were immigrants.
B. Hispanic babies all over the U.S. were typically healthier than other babies.
C. Non-Hispanic white mothers were least likely to be teenagers.
D. Nearly 19 percent of black mothers were teenagers.