Text 2
An Asian engineer is assigned to a U. S. laboratory and almost suffers a nervous breakdown. A U.S. executive tells his staff he’s going to treat them fairly -- and creates dissension. A Japanese manager is promoted by his American president, but within six months asks for a transfer.
Each of these real-life cases involved people who were regarded as superior employees, but were ill-equipped to cope with the complexities and dangers of intercultural management.
"Multinational companies have studied everything else, now they’re finally looking at culture", says Clifford Clarke, founder and president of the California-based IRI International Inc. "Never show the shoe to an Arab, never arrive in time for a party in Brazil, and in Japan, don’t think ’yes’ means ’yes’," advise U. S. consultants Lennie Copland and Lewis Brown Griggs, who have produced a series of films and a book to help managers improve their international business skills. But simply learning the social "dos" and "don’ts" is not the answer, according to the new culture specialists. The penalties for ignoring different thinking patterns, they point out, can be disastrous.
For example, the American manager who promised to be fair thought he was telling his Japanese staff that their hard work would be rewarded, but when some workers received higher salary increases than others, there were complaints. "You told us you’d be fair, and you lied to us," accused one salesman. "It took me a year and a half", sighed the American, "to realize that ’fair’, to my staff, meant being treated equally."
The Asian engineer who suffered in America was the victim of another mistaken expectation. "He was accustomed to the warm group environment so typical in Japan," said his U.S. manager. "But in our company, we’re all expected to be self-starters, who thrive on working alone. For him, it was emotional starvation. He’s made the adjustment now, but he’d be humiliated if I told you his name, that’s another cultural difference."
The Japanese manager who failed to respond to his promotion couldn’t bring himself to use the more direct language needed to communicate with his Boston-based superiors. "I used to think all this talk about cultural communication was a log of baloney," says Eugene J. Flath, president of Intel Japan Ltd. , a subsidiary of the American semiconductor maker. "Now, I can see it’s a real problem. Miscommunication has slowed our ability to coordinate action with our home office."
That’s why Intel, with the help of consultant Clarke, began an intercultural training program this spring which Flath expects will dramatically reduce decision-making time now lost in making sure the Americans and the Japanese understand each other.

A:balcony. B:nonsense. C:feat. D:simplicity.

Austerity is a word much found on the lips of politicians and economists at the moment; but it is seldom heard from technologists. And although the idea that "less is more" has many adherents in architecture, design and fashion, the technology industry has historically held the opposite view. Products should have as many features as possible; and next year’s version should have even more. As prices fall, what starts off as a fancy new feature quickly becomes commonplace prompting companies to add new features in an effort to outdo their rivals. Never mind if nobody uses most of these new features. In an arms race, more is always more.
But now there are signs that technologists are waking up to the benefits of minimalism, thanks to two things: feature fatigue among consumers who simply want things to work, and strong demand from less affluent consumers in the developing world. It is telling that the market value of Apple, the company most closely associated with simple, elegant high-tech products, recently overtook that of Microsoft, the company with the most notorious case of new-featuritis. Gadgets are no longer just for geeks, and if technology is to appeal to a broad audience, simplicity trumps fancy specifications.
Another strand of techno-austerity can be found in software that keeps things simple in order to reduce distractions and ensure that computer-users remain focused and productive. Many word processors now have special full-screen modes, so that all unnecessary and distracting menus are disabled or hidden; rather than fiddling with font sizes or checking e-mail, you are encouraged to get on with your writing. A computer on which some features are not present, or have been deliberately disabled, may in fact be more useful if you are trying to get things done. There are no distracting hyperlinks on a typewriter.
And then there is the phenomenon of "frugal" innovation--the new ideas that emerge when trying to reduce the cost of something in order to make it affordable to consumers in places like China, India and Brazil. The resulting products often turn out to have huge appeal in the rich world too, especially in an era of belt-tighten- ing. The netbook, or low-cost laptop, was inspired by a scheme to produce cheap laptops for children in poor countries, but has since proved popular with consumers around the world.
All this offers grounds for hope. If the feature--obsessed technology industry can change its tune, perhaps there is a chance that governments--which have also tended to be habitual believers in the idea that more is more--might also come to appreciate the merits of minimalism.
We learn from Paragraph 2 that nowadays

A:consumers are fond of various features of gadgets. B:Apple are best known for creating new features. C:consumers of developing countries are wealthy. D:technologists begin to pay attention to simplicity.

Austerity is a word much found on the lips of politicians and economists at the moment; but it is seldom heard from technologists. And although the idea that "less is more" has many adherents in architecture, design and fashion, the technology industry has historically held the opposite view. Products should have as many features as possible; and next year’s version should have even more. As prices fall, what starts off as a fancy new feature quickly becomes commonplace prompting companies to add new features in an effort to outdo their rivals. Never mind if nobody uses most of these new features. In an arms race, more is always more.
But now there are signs that technologists are waking up to the benefits of minimalism, thanks to two things: feature fatigue among consumers who simply want things to work, and strong demand from less affluent consumers in the developing world. It is telling that the market value of Apple, the company most closely associated with simple, elegant high-tech products, recently overtook that of Microsoft, the company with the most notorious case of new-featuritis. Gadgets are no longer just for geeks, and if technology is to appeal to a broad audience, simplicity trumps fancy specifications.
Another strand of techno-austerity can be found in software that keeps things simple in order to reduce distractions and ensure that computer-users remain focused and productive. Many word processors now have special full-screen modes, so that all unnecessary and distracting menus are disabled or hidden; rather than fiddling with font sizes or checking e-mail, you are encouraged to get on with your writing. A computer on which some features are not present, or have been deliberately disabled, may in fact be more useful if you are trying to get things done. There are no distracting hyperlinks on a typewriter.
And then there is the phenomenon of "frugal" innovation--the new ideas that emerge when trying to reduce the cost of something in order to make it affordable to consumers in places like China, India and Brazil. The resulting products often turn out to have huge appeal in the rich world too, especially in an era of belt-tighten- ing. The netbook, or low-cost laptop, was inspired by a scheme to produce cheap laptops for children in poor countries, but has since proved popular with consumers around the world.
All this offers grounds for hope. If the feature--obsessed technology industry can change its tune, perhaps there is a chance that governments--which have also tended to be habitual believers in the idea that more is more--might also come to appreciate the merits of minimalism.
It can be inferred from the last paragraph that

A:government also bebeive in minimalism. B:government may pursue simplicity in future. C:technologists are different from government. D:there is no hope for government to chang

They began to appreciate its simplicity and its deep meaning. It was a speech which only Abraham Lincoln could have made. (Passage 1 )

Many economists have given in to the fatal {{U}}lure{{/U}} of mathematics.

A:attraction B:simplicity C:power D:rigor

Many economists have given in to the fatal lure of mathematics.（　）

A:simplicity B:attraction C:power D:rigor

Many economists have given in to the fatal {{U}}lure{{/U}} of mathematics.

A:simplicity B:attraction C:power D:rigor

Many economists have given in to the fatal {{U}}lure {{/U}} of mathematics.

A:attraction B:simplicity C:power D:rigor