"Making money is a dirty game," says the Institute of Economic Affairs. summing up the attitude of British novelists towards business. The IEA. a free market think-tank, has just published a collection of essays (The Representation of Business in English Literature) by five academics chronicling the hostility of the country’s men and women of letters to the sordid business of making money. The implication is that Britain’s economic performance Is retarded by an anti-industrial culture.
Rather than blaming rebellious workers and incompetent managers for Britain’s economic worries. then, we can put George Orwell and Martin Amis in the dock instead. From Dickens’s Scrooge to Amis’s John Self in his 1980s novel Money, novelists have conjured up a rogue’s gallery of mean. greedy, amoral money-men that has alienated their impressionable readers from the noble pursuit of capitalism.
The argument has been well made before, most famously in 1981 by Martin Wiener. an American academic, in his English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Lady Thatcher was an admirer of Mr. Wiener’s. and she led a crusade to revive the "entrepreneurial culture" which the liberal elite had allegedly trampled underfoot. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, sounds as though he agrees with her. At a recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry, he declared that it should be the duty of every teacher in the country to "communicate the virtues of business and enterprise".
Certainly, most novelists are hostile to capitalism, but this refrain risks scapegoating writers for failings for which they are not to blame. Britain’s culture is no more anti-business than that of other countries. The Romantic Movement. which started as a reaction against the industrial revolution of the 21st century, was born and flourished in Germany, but has not stopped the Germans from being Europe’s most successful entreprcneurs and industrialists.
Even the Americans are guilty of blackening business’s name. SMERSH and SPECTRE went our with the cold war, James Bond now takes on international media magnates rather than Rosa Kleb. His films such as Erin Brockovich have pitched downtrodden, moral heroes against the evil of faceless corporatism. Yet none of this seems to have dented America’s lust for free enterprise.
The irony is that the novel flourished as an art form only after, and as a result of. the creation of the new commercial classes of Victorian England, just as the modem Hollywood film can exist only in an era of mass consumerism. Perhaps the moral is that capitalist societies consume literature and film to let off steam rather than to change the world.
George Orwell and Martin Amis should be responsible for the retarded economy because ______.

A:they are blaming rebellious workers and incompetent managers B:they create an anti-industrial culture C:the novelists are in favor of them D:novelists depict them as merciful people

American higher education stands on the brink (边缘) of chaos. (1) have so many spent so long learning so little.
The present crisis (2) the increasingly widespread acceptance among faculty and administrators of the fatal educational (3) that a student should not be required to do any academic work that (4) him. If a student prefers not to study science or history or literature, he is (5) to attain his degree without studying any science, history, or literature.
Throughout the country the attempt is being (6) to provide students with what is advertised as a (7) education without requiring of them the necessary self-discipline and hard work. Students have been led to believe they can achieve (8) effort, that all they need to do in order to obtain a good education is skip (跳跃) casually down the merry road to learning. Unfortunately, that road is no (9) a detour (绕路) to the dead end of ignorance.
We must realize that becoming an educated person is a difficult, demanding (10) . Just as anyone who spoke of intense (11) training as a continuous source of pleasure and delight would be thought a fool, for we all know how much pain and frustration such training involves, so anyone who speaks of intense mental (12) as a continuous source of joy and ecstasy ought to be thought (13) foolish, for such effort also involves pain and frustration. Of course, there can be joy in learning as there can be joy in sport. But in both cases the joy is a result of overcoming genuine (14) and cannot be experienced without sweat.
And that he (15) well is no reason why he should not be criticized for an (16) performance. Such criticism, when well-founded and constructive, is (17) demeaning (有辱人格的). Yet criticism of any sort is (18) nowadays. (19) student opinion is given greater and greater (20) in the evaluation of faculty, professors are busy trying to ingratiate (迎合) themselves with the students.

A:inadequate B:unqualified C:incompetent D:incapable

"Making money is a dirty game," says the Institute of Economic Affairs. summing up the attitude of British novelists towards business. The IEA. a free market think-tank, has just published a collection of essays (The Representation of Business in English Literature) by five academics chronicling the hostility of the country’s men and women of letters to the sordid business of making money. The implication is that Britain’s economic performance Is retarded by an anti-industrial culture.
Rather than blaming rebellious workers and incompetent managers for Britain’s economic worries. then, we can put George Orwell and Martin Amis in the dock instead. From Dickens’s Scrooge to Amis’s John Self in his 1980s novel Money, novelists have conjured up a rogue’s gallery of mean. greedy, amoral money-men that has alienated their impressionable readers from the noble pursuit of capitalism.
The argument has been well made before, most famously in 1981 by Martin Wiener. an American academic, in his English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Lady Thatcher was an admirer of Mr. Wiener’s. and she led a crusade to revive the "entrepreneurial culture" which the liberal elite had allegedly trampled underfoot. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, sounds as though he agrees with her. At a recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry, he declared that it should be the duty of every teacher in the country to "communicate the virtues of business and enterprise".
Certainly, most novelists are hostile to capitalism, but this refrain risks scapegoating writers for failings for which they are not to blame. Britain’s culture is no more anti-business than that of other countries. The Romantic Movement. which started as a reaction against the industrial revolution of the 21st century, was born and flourished in Germany, but has not stopped the Germans from being Europe’s most successful entreprcneurs and industrialists.
Even the Americans are guilty of blackening business’s name. SMERSH and SPECTRE went our with the cold war, James Bond now takes on international media magnates rather than Rosa Kleb. His films such as Erin Brockovich have pitched downtrodden, moral heroes against the evil of faceless corporatism. Yet none of this seems to have dented America’s lust for free enterprise.
The irony is that the novel flourished as an art form only after, and as a result of. the creation of the new commercial classes of Victorian England, just as the modem Hollywood film can exist only in an era of mass consumerism. Perhaps the moral is that capitalist societies consume literature and film to let off steam rather than to change the world.

A:they are blaming rebellious workers and incompetent managers B:they create an anti-industrial culture C:the novelists are in favor of them D:novelists depict them as merciful people

When people talk about the digital divide, they usually mean the (1) between people who are benefiting from the information revolution, and those who through lack of (2) or money are (3) out. But at a United Nations conference in Brazil that concluded on April 19th, a different (though related) sort of divide was on (4) , and ten days’ chatter by over 100 countries failed to (5) it.
If there was one thing on which almost everybody agreed, it was that criminals are (6) computer technology much faster (7) most governments are learning to foil them. Rich countries say they are (8) by fraudsters, pornographers and hackers operating (9) poor places where they will never be caught—because their " (10) " governments can’t or won’t stop them.
One response is the Budapest Convention, an agreement (11) at the Council of Europe in 2001, and ratified by the United States in 2006. One of its (12) is to let authorities in one country give (13) , at least electronically, to criminals in another.
But Russia has (14) the principle of " transborder access", especially since 2000, when American agents hacked (15) the computers of two Russians who were (16) American banks. (17) , Russia is backing a UN treaty which would be respectful of borders while also giving police more powers to shut down websites (18) in "propaganda. " Many countries like that idea—but not enough to push it (19) . For now, the only (20) are the criminals.

A:assistant B:evil C:incompetent D:host

Some of the house on the hillside are ______ to cars.

A:impossible B:incompetent C:installed D:inaccessible

Passage Two
If you have ever been mistaken for somebody else, you can certainly sympathize with two young women from Maryland, both named Wanda Marie Johnson.
One Wanda was living and working in Washington, D.C., when she became confused with the second Wanda, a former resident of the area, whom she’d never met. Both Wan- das were born on June 15, 1953, and their social security numbers are the same except for the final three digits. Amazingly, they both moved from Washington to St. George’s Grenada.
Both women drove cars of the same year and model, which really confused the computers at the Department of Motor Vehicles. When one of the Wandas applied for her driver’s license, she was told she already had one and that she was required to wear glasses while driving. She spoke to four supervisors before convincing the authorities that her vision was perfect and that she really did need a license. She then received two licenses instead of one.
The Wandas also became confused in medical and credit records. One of the women was hounded for not paying a bill for furniture she had never purchased. She couldn’t convince a skeptical debt collector that she’d never been in the store.
Newspapers finally picked up the story, and the identity confusion was brought to light. The Wandas met to discuss solution to their bizarre predicament. One Wanda was re- ported to be considering using her maiden name.

A:free-thinking B:cruel C:doubting D:incompetent

Passage Two
If you have ever been mistaken for somebody else, you can certainly sympathize with two young women from Maryland, both named Wanda Marie Johnson.
One Wanda was living and working in Washington, D.C., when she became confused with the second Wanda, a former resident of the area, whom she’d never met. Both Wan- das were born on June 15, 1953, and their social security numbers are the same except for the final three digits. Amazingly, they both moved from Washington to St. George’s Grenada.
Both women drove cars of the same year and model, which really confused the computers at the Department of Motor Vehicles. When one of the Wandas applied for her driver’s license, she was told she already had one and that she was required to wear glasses while driving. She spoke to four supervisors before convincing the authorities that her vision was perfect and that she really did need a license. She then received two licenses instead of one.
The Wandas also became confused in medical and credit records. One of the women was hounded for not paying a bill for furniture she had never purchased. She couldn’t convince a skeptical debt collector that she’d never been in the store.
Newspapers finally picked up the story, and the identity confusion was brought to light. The Wandas met to discuss solution to their bizarre predicament. One Wanda was re- ported to be considering using her maiden name.

A:free-thinking B:cruel C:doubting D:incompetent

He was ______ of deciding anything for himself.

A:incapable B:ineffective C:incompetent D:unable