简答题No matter how much love confessions she has made, the poor boy remains _________ to her. A、obvious B、obsolete C、obscure D、oblivious简答题The outbreak of Novel Coronavirus pneumonia makes people aware that it is important to _________ small amounts of money in an emergency fund, and make sure you use it — well, only for emergencies! A、stash away B、smash away C、snatch away D、slash away简答题The term parade is __________ the Latin word parare, to prepare — in a military context — for war. A、incorporate of B、part of C、acquired from D、derived from简答题What do you think about ___________ regions where governors are able to make their own decisions? A、automatic B、autonomous C、authentic D、amanous简答题It is indeed a(an) ____________ to be here and listen to Doctor Zhong Nanshan’s speech. A、priority B、advantage C、privilege D、right判断题A. advocateB. contentC. coreD. cycleE. debtF. deriveG. episodesH. keepingI. livingJ. luxuryK. openL. privilegeM. sakeN. striveO. websitesPeople often ask me how to get off the consumer escalator (自动扶梯). Step one is to begin to control your consumer desires. For example, don’t surf shopping (1)_______. You also have to convince the other people around you to start acting differently too. One response by a growing number of Americans has been to reject the (2)_______ of work and spend. Adjusting their consumption, working less, even embracing principles of being (3)_______ with simplicity. For the (4)_______ of fewer working hours, they often have to leave their jobs, and that’s a cost not many of us can pay. We need to (5)_______ up those corporate policies to give people the right to work less, to give people better vacations. We need to (6)_______ a progressive consumption tax, which puts higher burdens on the people who buy expensive products. Today our identities are so deeply wrapped up in the (7)_______ products that we own and use. To get out of work and spend we need to look carefully at the messages that are coming from Madison Avenue. Much of what they’re telling us is that exclusivity (排他性) is the cool value we want to (8)_______ for, but isn’t a better value system than one which highlights our commonality, which is more about connecting with other people, rather than (9)_______ up with them and having more than they do. We can make those connections ourselves. This should be the (10)_______ of our life philosophy.简答题You need to get ready for new challenges when you ________ university. A、pretend B、attend C、intend D、extend简答题It reminded me of George Clooney’s role in Up in the Air, __________ homeless and alone. A、primarily B、ultimately C、essentially D、basically判断题The Relativity of Absolute Well-Being A)How are people’s desires for and consumption of things dependent on what others have? We can best answer this question by considering how their desires for and consumption of things are not dependent on what others have. It is natural to think here in terms of basic needs or minimum requirements — conditions that must be met if a person is to lead a minimally decent life. A person’s need to consume some number of calories and nutrition, or to have clothing and shelter against the elements, exists independently of what other people have or do. Without food one dies; what other people do is unrelated. B)Even biological needs, however, are not wholly independent of context or circumstance; they may depend, in particular, in part on what other people do. In a society in which considerable physical effort is important — either because physical activity is socially valued or because scarcity requires strength or speed to acquire necessities — a greater caloric intake might be needed to function effectively or well. C) Whether all needs are partly relative to what others do, and thus in some cases to “ways of life”, is a question we need not answer here. Two points are worth noting, however. First, a great deal depends on how we specify or describe needs. Suppose, for example, we agree that people have a basic need for enough food to survive or thrive. Stated in this way, the need is absolute in the sense of remaining the same regardless of circumstances, including the behavior of others. But how much food is enough to survive or thrive will vary depending on the circumstances. Thus, although we can describe the need absolutely, its satisfaction may depend on relational facts. As Amartya Sen argues, the absolute satisfaction of some needs might depend on a person’s position relative to others. D)Second, some needs are much more relative than others. The need for air is quite nonrelative. Think, by contrast, of the ability to work, or, even more simply, to get around and do things (acquire food and the like) for oneself. In many contemporary communities, it is difficult to perform these tasks without private transportation. The need for a car is not “absolute” in the sense of existing no matter what context is. The economic system and the infrastructure (基础设施) could have evolved differently so that a car would not be an absolutely necessary item of modern life. A well-functioning system of public transportation creates and perpetuates demand: the larger and finer the net it casts (that is, the more places you can get to using it), the more people use it; the more people use it, the greater its economies of scale; the greater its economies of scale, the better and cheaper it gets. In such cases, people have purely economic and practical reasons for doing as others do. E)In many communities today, however, a car is a virtual necessity; indeed, for a suburban or rural family two cars are often required. A person’s desire for a car, then, although dependent on what other people have and do, need not be rooted in greed, envy, or the desire for status. Many items once thought of as high-tech luxuries — television, cable television, computers, online databases — become nearly essential in a technologically sophisticated society. Invention is the mother of necessity. F)Just how far the point illustrated by this example extends is a difficult question. The danger on one side is being led to say that the lack of a necessity relative to others in one’s society is the frustration of a basic or important need. On the other side, critics of contemporary Western culture — those who criticize “conspicuous consumption” and materialistic values — often pay insufficient attention to the significance of relative deprivation (缺失) for absolute well-being. G)Even when it would be an exaggeration to say that a particular item has moved from the status of luxury to necessity, new goods often become entrenched (牢固确立) in a society — become more like needs — in a subtle and interesting process. We can observe this transformation with many recent innovations: microwaves, answering machines, VCRs, electronic mail. When first introduced, such items may not appear valuable, at least to those not crazy about gadgets. Gradually — but really very quickly — even the skeptics start to notice the thing’s uses. For example, while the benefits to owners of answering machines were immediately apparent, some callers at first found the devices awkward or even insulting. Soon, however, even skeptical callers began to notice the advantages to themselves: not having to call back repeatedly when no one answered; avoiding unwanted and unnecessarily long conversations. Complaints about “talking to a machine” are rarely heard anymore. H)How is this phenomenon of the entrenchment of new products linked to the relational aspects of consumption? Acquisition of a product by many people can make it more necessary in an absolute sense, even if not always a “necessity”. In some cases — public versus private transportation — this is a question of infrastructure: where others take buses, there will be buses, available to all, and I will have less need for a car. In other cases, such as electronic mail and online databases, we have what economists call networking effects: one lacking the service is made worse off by being cut off from the flow of information. Even the answering machine can affect how people conduct business, so that those lacking them may both suffer disadvantages themselves and also inconvenience others. So, for example, where it is assumed that most people have answering machines, it might be reasonable to ask someone to make a dozen phone calls, on the assumption that messages can be left if no one answers. The person without an answering machine forces the messenger to work harder by calling repeatedly, and is more likely not to be reached at all. This may be more than an inconvenience: it may cost a businessperson his livelihood if the caller is a customer with alternative providers. _______ 1. The efficient operation of the public transportation system, for example, may make the need for a car not absolute. _______ 2. Critics of conspicuous consumption may need to consider what some people lack compared with others in terms of certain absolute needs. _______ 3. One’s life can become inconvenient if lacking certain goods or services that are available to many other people. _______ 4. Some needs are absolute but how much is enough to satisfy the needs may be relative. _______ 5. A person’s basic needs for a minimally decent life are independent of what others have. _______ 6. Many technological inventions worked their way gradually into people’s lives and became accepted as a necessity. _______ 7. One may suffer a business loss if he makes his customer call repeatedly without the choice of leaving a message on an answering machine. _______ 8. Owning a car in the countryside or a computer in this modern world may not be considered conspicuous consumption. _______ 9. New items, when first introduced, could be dismissed by some people who did not consider them useful. _______ 10. A society’s way of life which requires physical work may depend in part on what and how much others consume.简答题An unexpected strength of the book is the chance it affords Jeffrey Mason, one of the original detectives who doubted Marie, to ______ his mistakes. A、date back B、date to C、look back on D、look onto多选题Due to a range of (1) _______ including people’s desire of showing off and more convenient way of crediting, “keeping up with the Joneses”, or (2) _______ consumption, has brought the luxurious lifestyles to suburbia. Over a decade, a growing number of people concerned the cable, home computer, cell phone and other items to be on the (3) _______ . Although still being recognized as luxuries, quite a few other items such as cosmetic surgery maintained their (4) _______ . This excessive consumption has become a (5) _______ , with not only America but China, India and other countries joining the (6) _______ and coveting a different lifestyle. However, a study reveals a (7) _______ outlook that most of these “Joneses” were just barely (8) _______ . People should learn to (9) _______ their needs from a practical perspective. If you’re without endless monetary supply, (10) _______ your spending wisely.简答题We all wish that the world would be peaceful and harmonious, and everyone would become very ___________ and virtuous. A、beneficial B、benevolent C、benefitial D、benefited简答题Stop ___________ about your family background. Girls don’t care that as much as you think. A、blasting B、boasting C、busting D、boosting简答题The big homes, expensive toys and other goodies seem nice, but in reality they are unnecessary from a practical perspective and will only make you happy for a very short period of time before the next “must-have” item rolls around. A、Some items are not necessary in real life so people will replace them with more practical and necessary ones soon. B、Some items are not necessary in real life so people will lose interest quickly and shift their attention to more unnecessary ones.简答题Look at the bus schedule to find the one _________ for Chongqing and find its accurate spot. A、bond B、band C、bend D、bound