专业英语八级分类模拟题阅读理解(十一)

专业英语八级分类模拟题阅读理解(十一)
Text A
Every political period has its characteristic form of scandal. During the Reagan defense buildup of the mid-1980s, the scandal of the day was "waste, fraud and mismanagement" at the Pentagon, symbolized by the infamous $640 toilet seat. Amid the general embarrassment and excuse-making, only one defense hawk was bold enough to declare that waste and fraud were actually good things. "We need more" of them, wrote Edward Luttwak in Commentary. If you're going to build a stronger defense and build it fast, a bit of corruption is a necessary by-product.
Today's characteristic form of scandal is financial abuse and excess. So where is the Luttwak of today who will cut through all the demagoguery and the whining, the outraged criticism and the mealymouthed apologies, and say, "Look, you want a vigorous entrepreneurial economy?" A bit of excess is a necessary by-product. ~'We need more" financial abuse—it is a sign that capitalism is working.
Who has the courage to make this argument? I am not that man. But if 1 were that man, the case would run something like this: the magic of capitalism, as explained by Adam Smith and his followers, is that it channels individual greed into activities that benefit all of us. "Greed is good," declared Michael Douglas, playing a corrupt financier in the movie Wall Street. More accurately, greed is inevitable. It is part of the human condition. And in moderation, economists argue and history demonstrates, greed is no bad thing. Free-market economies could not function if we were all Mother Teresa.
But there is nothing inherent in the human condition that keeps greed in moderation. So there are laws, and there are appearances. Both these forces draw a rough line—and attempt to place it—between greed that helps other people and greed that hurts other people. Inevitably, though, some will take greed too far. And that's a good thing (goes the argument I lack the courage to make). Why? Because you can't regulate greed with precision.
Keynes used the term "animal spirits" to describe the motivation of business people. A successful economy needs a culture that encourages them, up to a point. It's a Goldilocks-type situation. You don't want too much greed, and you don't want too little—you want an amount that's just right. But
the dials are not all that sensitive. A culture that encourages enough greed in enough people will encourage too much in a few. If nobody is taking greed too far, you can be certain that too few people are taking it far enough.
For some reason, none of the lawyers who are defending the big greedheads have chosen to make this argument. Instead, they offer inconsistent theories to explain the obvious. Lawyers for the Rigas family, which performed the remarkable feat of bankrupting a cable company, say their clients can't be guilty of a conspiracy to loot the company because they are too dimwitted: one is "not the savviest guy," another is "clueless." Martha Stewart's defense, by contrast, was in part that she is too clever to have done anything as dumb as conspiring to break the securities laws.
Lawyers for Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco, take this line of reasoning further. The Wall Street Journal called theirs the "brazenness defense." Kozlowski made no secret of the fact that he used Tyco money for a yacht, kept his mistresses on the payroll and (possibly therefore) also let Tyco finance a $5 million diamond ring for his wife. How could he have criminal intent if it was all out in the open? By contrast, Scott Sullivan, former CFO of WorldCom, engaged in a more traditional form of gall in pleading guilty to $11 billion worth of accounting fraud. It was a "misguided effort to save the company," he said. Call this the Vietnam defense: it was necessary to destroy the company in order to save it.
Will no one step forward to say clearly that these seeming malefactors are actually heroes? That we need more of them, not fewer? True, Martha has been found guilty (though she is appealing), and others may lose in court as well. True, these people may have personally harmed the economy and ripped off many individual investors. Nevertheless, taken together, they are a sign of the economy's robust health. Far better that a few greedheads get carried away than that we are worried that we are not getting the benefit of all the good, healthy, productive sort of greed that this county is capable of producing.
In fact, think of these unpopular figures as the canaries of capitalism. They precede us into the coal mine of greed, going farther than the rest of us dare, showing us where far enough becomes too far and perishing in the effort. They are martyrs of capitalism, dying financially so that others may prosper. Does no one have the simple guts to tell this truth?
Well, I certainly don't.1. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT the defense made by the lawyers?
A.The Rigas family are not so clever as to bankrupt the company.
B.Martha Stewart is so clever as not to break the securities law.
C.Kozlowski does not intend to commit a crime since everything is in the open.
D.Greed is good for the economy to develop.
答案：D
由第六段和第七段可知，选项A、B和C都是律师为他们的当事人做的辩护，但是没有人做出D这样的辩护来，因此，D为正确答案。

2. "Malefactors" in the eighth paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
A.entrepreneurs
B.male presidents
C.criminals
D.heroes
答案：C
结合上下文可知．这些巨贪可能都会受到法律的制裁，因此，作者用了seeming一词，所以选项C更符合题意，为正确答案。

3. What is the author's attitude toward those malefactors?
A.appreciative
B.angry
C.contemptuous
D.negative
答案：A
作者认为，那些巨贪以身试法，告诫人们犯罪的界限，从而使其他人能够保持适度的欲望，以促进经济的发展。

故选项A符合题意，为正确答案。

4. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?
A.The economy will not develop if too few people are taking greed too far.
B.Greed can stimulate economy.
C.People like Mother Teresa help enhance the economy.
D.The cases of those malefactors show the businessmen the farthest place they can go.
答案：C
作者在第三段中指出，适度的欲望能够刺激经济的发展，但如果我们都是Mother Teresa，自由市场经济是不可能健康发展的，由此判断，选项C与原文不符，故为正确答案。

5. The main purpose of the passage is to ______.
A.show that financial abuse is a bad thing.
B.defend excess.
C.criticize a few people's financial abuse.
D.look for the cause of financial excess.
答案：B
本文作者提出的观点与众不同，认为适度的欲望有助于经济的发展，而少数人的过度贪婪则为其他人指出了贪欲的界限。

因此，作者的目的是为贪欲而辩护。

故选项B为正确答案。

Text B
At a chess tournament in Tunisia in 1967, Bobby Fischer, then 24, was pitted against another American grand master, Samuel Reshevsky. At game time, Fischer was nowhere to be found, so Reshevsky sat down opposite Fischer's empty chair, made his first move, punched the game clock and waited. And waited. With five minutes left, Fischer suddenly strode onstage and, with a series of blindingly quick moves, hammered Reshevsky into defeat. Two days later, Fischer quit the tournament and abandoned competitive chess for two years. Which raises the question, Why is the gift of genius so often given to people too stupid to know what to do with it?
In "Bobby Fischer Goes to War" (Ecco; 342 pages),David Edmonds and John Eidinow tell the story of Fischer's most famous match, the 1972 world championship in Reykjavik. Fischer faced Soviet grand master Boris Spassky in a chess game that was not only an epic staring match between two intellectual gladiators but also the focus of all kinds of weird, free-floating cold war cultural-political energy. It was the Rumble in the Jungle and the Cuban missile crisis all rolled into one.
The drama was hopelessly miscast. Fischer, the champion of the American way, was an antisocial, anti-Semitic ego-maniac who complained about the lighting, the auditorium, the prize money, even the marble the chessboard was made of. Spassky, the cog in the Soviet machine, was a genial, sensitive fellow who liked a drink once in a while. He was Ali to Fischer's Foreman. Of course, Fischer ate him alive. "Bobby Fischer Goes to War" tells the story in fine, brisk style, interpreting the red-hot chess-fu action—the Ruy Lopez opening! The Nimzo-Indian defense!—for us nongeniuses and conveying the richness of the world beyond the chessboard through details plucked from FBI and KGB records. We see, for example, Soviet experts whisking Spassky's orange juice back to Moscow to test for suspicious capitalist contaminants.
It seems to be in the nature of genius to zero in on its purpose. In the 1790s a young French boy
named Jean-Francois Champollion, the son of a bookseller, became obsessed with ancient languages —not only Latin and Greek hut also Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Chaldean. According to "The Linguist and the Emperor" (Ballantine; 271 pages), by Daniel Meyerson, Champollion was a dreamy, solitary kid who mouthed oft in class, but as a schoolboy, he assembled a 2,000-page dictionary of Coptic, an ancient Egyptian language. Luckily for him, French soldiers in Egypt soon discovered the Rosetta stone, a chunk of gray and pink rock with the same text written on it in both Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics, which no one had yet deciphered. Unlocking hieroglyphics was Champollion's great work, and Meyerson tells the story as a passionate linguistic love affair. After finally solving the mystery, Champollion collapsed in a coma for eight days.
Champollion and Fischer were lucky: they were heroes in their time. Deprived of the spotlight, genius can grow up twisted and strange. David Hahn was the child of divorced, clueless parents living in a David Lynch—perfect Michigan suburb in the mid-1990s. A loner and a compulsive tinkerer, Hahn somehow got it into his head in high school to build a nuclear reactor in his mom's potting shed, and damn if he didn't come close. In "The Radioactive Boy Scout" (Random House; 209 pages), Ken Silverstein describes how Hahn extracted radioactive elements from household objects—americium from smoke detectors, thorium from Coleman lanterns, deadly radium from the glow-in-the-dark paint used on the hands of vintage clocks. For sheer improvisational ingenuity, Hahn makes MacGyver look like Jessica Simpson. When public-health officials finally caught on to what Hahn was up to, the potting shed was so hot that it had to be classified as a Superfund site.
Stories about geniuses rarely end well. Hahn wound up in the Navy, assigned to the
nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the U.S. Enterprise, but his officers wouldn't even let him tour the engine room. Champollion died at 40. Fischer never defended his world title. He declined into irascibility and then obscurity. What happened to him? A chess master once said, "Chess is not something that drives people mad. Chess is something that keeps mad people sane." Which is to say that genius may lie not only in having a gift but in lacking something crucial as well. Reading these books, one feels grateful for being just a little stupid.1. According to the passage, which of the following about the 1972 match is NOT true?
A.Fischer defeated Spassky.
B.It was a match between two cleverest men.
C.It was an embodiment of strength of the two coutries.
D.Fischer lost the match hopelessly.
答案：D
由第二段和第三段可知，1972年那场比赛是在两个“intellectual gladiators”之间进行的，是美国和前苏联力量的较量，最后，当然是Fischer赢得了那场比赛。

因此，选项D与原文不符，为正确答案。

2. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A.Champollion was linguistically gifted.
B.Champollion became great for what he did.
C.Champollion made great efforts to decipher the dead language.
D.Champollion died of hard working at 40.
答案：D
由第四段可知，Champollion有语言上的天赋(选项A)，在成功地破解了Coptic这一古埃及文字之后，陷入昏迷达八天之久，可见其对工作的专心和投入(选项C)，作者在第五段中说，Champollion是幸运的，因为他成为了那个时代的英雄(选项B)，最后一段只是说Champollion英年早逝，但未提及死亡原因，故选项D与原文不符，应为正确答案。

3. What is the main idea of the passage?
A.Geniuses are great people.
B.Geniuses are strange people.
C.Geniuses always lead a sad life.
D.To be too gifted is not good for people.
答案：D
选项A、B和C在文章中都被提及，但不是全文的主旨，作者在最后点明主题，我们应该为有点愚蠢而心生感激，过于聪明反而不是好事。

故选项D为正确答案。

4. What is the author's attitude toward the geniuses?
A.appreciative
B.sympathetic
C.indifferent
D.admiring
答案：B
通读全文可知，作者对书中的天才既有赞赏又有同情，而文章最后一段表明作者的同情之心更大一些，故选项B为正确答案。

5. The book "Bobby Fischer Goes to War" describes the following except ______.
A.The Vietnam War Fischer went to
B.Fischer's most famous match
C.Stories beyond the match
D.Fischer's character
答案：D
由二、三段不难看出，Bobby Fischer Goes to War一书讲述了Fischer最有名的那场比赛(B)，讲述了赛场外的故事(C)，也描述了Fischer的性格(D)，虽然提到了越战(the Rumble in the Jungle)，但Fischer并没有参加，故选项A与原文不符，应为正确答案。

Text C
Was the Red Planet once a wet planet? A plucky Martian rover finally delivers some hard evidence. Giovanni Schiaparelli could have told you there had been water on Mars. It was Schiaparelli who peered through his telescope one evening in 1877 and discovered what he took to be the Red Planet's famous canals. As it turned out, the canals were an optical illusion, but as more powerful telescopes and, later, spacecraft zoomed in for closer looks, there was no shortage of clues suggesting that Mars was once awash in water. Photographs shot from orbit show vast plains that resemble ancient sea floors, steep gorges that would dwarf the Grand Canyon and sinuous surface scars that look an awful lot like dry riverbeds.
Given all that, why were NASA scientists so excited last week to announce that one of their Mars rovers, having crawled across the planet for five weeks, finally determined that Mars, at some point in its deep past, was indeed "drenched"—to use NASA's term—with liquid water?
Part of their excitement probably stems from sheer failure fatigue. NASA has had its share of setbacks in recent years—including a few disastrous missions to Mars. So it was with some relief that leading investigator Steve Squyres announced that the rover Opportunity had accomplished its primary mission. "The puzzle pieces have been falling into place," he told a crowded press conference, "and the last piece fell into place a few days ago."
But there was also, for the NASA team, the pleasure that comes from making a genuine contribution to space science. For despite all the signs pointing to Mars' watery past, until Opportunity poked its instruments into the Martian rocks, nobody was really sure how real that water was. At least some of the surface formations that look water carved could have been formed by volcanism and wind. Just two years ago, University of Colorado researchers published a persuasive paper suggesting that any water on Mars was carried in by crashing comets and then quickly evaporated.
The experiments that put that theory to rest—and nailed down the presence of water for good—were largely conducted on one 10-in.-high, 65-ft.-wide rock outcropping in the Meridiani Planum that mission scientists dubbed El Capitan. The surface of the formation is made up of fine layers—called parallel laminations—that are often laid down by minerals settling out of water. The rock is also randomly pitted with cavities called vugs that created when salt crystals form in briny water and then fall out or dissolve away.
Chemical analyses of El Capitan, performed with two different spectrometers, support the visual evidence. They show that it is rich in sulfates known to form in the presence of water as well as a mineral called jarosite, which not only forms in water but also actually contains a bit of water trapped in its matrix.
The most intriguing evidence comes in the form of the BB-size spherules—or "blueberries," as NASA calls them—scattered throughout the rock. Spheres like these can be formed either by volcanism or by minerals accreting under water, but the way the blueberries are mixed randomly through the rock—not layered on top, as they would have been after a volcanic eruption—strongly suggests the latter.
None of these findings are dispositive, but their combined weight persuaded NASA scientists to summarize their findings in unusually explicit language. "We have concluded that the rocks here were soaked with liquid water," said Squyres flatly. "The ground would have been suitable for life."
Does that mean that there was—or still is—life on Mars? The fossil record on Earth suggests that given enough time and H20, life will eventually emerge, but there's nothing in the current findings to prove that this happened on Mars. Without more knowledge of such variables as temperature, atmosphere and the length of time Martian water existed, we can't simply assume that what happened on our planet would necessarily occur on another.
Opportunity and its twin robot Spirit are not equipped to search for life. Their mission is limited to looking for signs of water. But there's still a lot for them to do. Just knowing that rocks were wet doesn't tell you if the water was flowing or stationary, if it melted down from ice caps or seeped up through the ground. And if water was once there in such abundance, where did it go? Opportunity, which is very likely to exceed its planned 90-day mission, is already looking for those answers, toddling off to investigate other rocks farther and farther from its landing site. Spirit is conducting its own studies in Gusev Crater, on the opposite side of the planet.
The next step—the search for life—will have to wait until 2013 or so. That's when NASA has
tentatively scheduled the first round trip to Mars—a mission that will pluck selected rocks off the Red Planet and bring them back home for closer study. Whether humans will ever follow those machines —President Bush's January announcement notwithstanding—is impossible to say.1. Which of the following provides the hard evidence that Mars was once a wet planet?
A.Schiaparelli
B.spacecraft
C.photographs shot from orbit
D.Martian rover Opportunity
答案：D
由文章第四段可知，“For despite all the signs pointing to Mars' watery past, until Opportunity poked its instruments into the Martian rocks, nobody was really sure how real that water was．”故选项D为正确答案。

2. The fact that there was water on Mars brings NASA the following with the exception of ______.
A.relief
B.fatigue
C.excitement
D.pleasure
答案：D
由第三段和第四段可知，火星上有水这一事实让科学家们激动不已，快乐无比，也让科学家们松了一口气，所以排除选项A、C和D，故B为正确答案。

3. According to the passage, the formations on the surface of Mars could have been formed by the following except ______.
A.wind
B.volcanoes
C.earthquakes
D.water brought by comets
答案：C
由第四段可知，选项A、B和D都被提及，而C没有被提及，故C为正确答案。

4. Which of the following is NOT true about the "blueberries" on the surface of Mars?
A.They were scattered everywhere on the top of the rock.
B.They were scattered here and there through the rock.
C.They may have been formed by minerals that accreted in water.
D.They are actually the size of BB spherules.
答案：A
由第七段可知，被称为“蓝莓”的小球体遍布石块的里外，大小为BB，可能是由水中的矿物质而形成，因为由火山爆发而形成的球体应该分布在石块的上部。

所以，选项A与原文不符，故为正确答案。

5. The rover Opportunity is doing the following except ______.
A.It needs to search for life.
B.It needs to know where the water came from.
C.It needs to know where the water on Mars went.
D.It needs to make clear the state of the water on Mars.
答案：A
由最后一段可知，寻找火星上是否有生命这一任务要等到2013年左右才开始进行，故选项A与题意不符，故排除。

Text D
Even if prices shoot back toward $50 a barrel, that won't wean the world from oil. Only government can do that.
Is the internal-combustion engine dead? Listening to all the voices calling hybrid vehicles the future of transportation, you might think so. Alternative energy is back in style among the chattering classes. But oil prices would have to go a lot higher to make so-called renewables—such as solar and wind energy—commercially viable. That means their future won't be decided by changing consumer tastes or market conditions, but by government policy.
These are facts. Any oil company will use Whatever energy source makes economic sense, since its basic mission is not to pump oil. It's to create value from energy. We figure the cost of one kilowatt of solar power at a minimum of five times the cost of oil power, even when oil is hovering near $50 a barrel—the recent record high, which we never expected to hold up for long. Solar power is even less competitive against cheaper fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, and relies on mature technology. A radically new technology—perhaps replacing the silicon in photovoltaic cells with polymers—will be needed to make solar cost-effective. That day is at least 20 years off. Wind is closer than solar to becoming competitive with fossil fuels, but its capacity to supply large amounts of energy is limited. And even the most modern windmills have inspired a popular backlash on esthetic grounds.
Many energy industrialists think nuclear is the answer, but they rely on a misleading analysis of its cost competitiveness. Even if you ignore the political concerns surrounding nuclear waste, producers often fail to correctly calculate the real price of electricity produced from nuclear energy. It costs about as much to close a nuclear plant as it does to build a new one, which is why nuclear power companies are now lobbying worldwide to delay planned plant closings. Moreover, it seems the height of folly to think that highly sensitive industrialized countries, where not-in-my-backyard outrage flourishes, will make it possible to site a single new plant, let alone create an entire energy-development plan. There's also a lot of fuzzy talk about things like hybrid homes and cars. Many analysts note that while consumers still pay a lot more for hybrid cars than they can make back in gas savings, this gap is closing. What this line of reasoning ignores is that no technology competes only against itself, and combustion engines are rapidly evolving, too. The rush to innovate is led by the makers of diesel engines, which nearly match the gas efficiency of hybrids, but at much lower cost to consumers. Diesel also cuts greenhouse emissions by 30 to 40 percent compared with gas.
The conclusion is that even with real oil prices at their highest levels in 20 years, no alternative can compete head-to-head with fossil fuels on a scale broad enough to challenge their market dominance. Given this outlook, market forces won't wean society away from oil, gas and coal. Only government can do this. And since the late 1970s and early 1980s, public funding for R&D in the energy sector has been halved in the United States and Europe. Incentives and subsidies to produce alternative energy sources have fallen throughout the developed world with only a few exceptions—Japan, Germany, Denmark and a few others. This is why, for example, the bulk of U.S. solar hardware is exported to Germany and Japan.
In the United States, public policy continues to support America's love of the sport utility vehicle, which is the major factor behind the continued surge of American oil demand. An absurd loophole allows SUVs to be considered light trucks—and thereby not subject to passenger-vehicle emission requirements. The average total (federal plus local) tax on gas is 25 percent, compared with 50 percent in Japan and more than 70 percent in Western Europe, which partly explains why an American consumes twice the energy of a European. Yet any attack on this policy structure is seen as an attack on the American lifestyle, a quick form of career suicide for politicians.
Europe also faces large (but very different) obstacles to the adoption of new energy sources. For example, high gasoline taxes do encourage conservation, but they also count as the third or fourth largest source of revenue for most European governments. This gives policymakers a double-edged
incentive to maintain the fossil-fuel status quo, because a transition to cleaner alternatives would cut their tax income, while raising outlays to subsidize the transition.
Yet the road to a society less dependent on oil is clear. If politicians were serious about these goals, the solution would be at hand: a mix of tax increase on oil products; more rigid mileage and emissions standards for automakers, and incentives to retire old cars and buy cleaner new ones. The transportation sector is crucial, since it will account for about 80 percent of the growth in world oil consumption over the next 25 years. These measures would motivate automakers to step up research, development and production of new cars and encourage consumers to buy them. But knowing the best road doesn't guarantee that society will take it.1. Which of the following about solar power is NOT true?
A.It is cost inefficient.
B.It needs high technology.
C.Solar energy even cannot compete with wind.
D.Today's high oil prices make solar power commercially feasible.
答案：D
由第二段可知，太阳能价格高，需要成熟的技术，风能的价格比太阳能低，选项A、B和C与原文一致，故排除；由第一段可知，今天的油价比太阳能的价格还低很多，从商业的角度来说，太阳能仍然不划算。

2. Which of the following is TRUE about nuclear?
A.Nuclear is cost efficient.
B.Nuclear is the alternative energy to oil.
C.Industrialized countries are not likely to build any new plant.
D.Industrialized countries will make a nuclear energy-development plan.
答案：C
由第三段可知，对核能成本的分析具有误导作用，其实，核能的费用是很高的，因而不能成为石油的替代品；那些工业化国家不会再建造任何新的核电站，更不会制定核能源发展计划。

因此只有选项C 与原文相符，为正确答案。

3. Which of the following is NOT true about sport utility vehicle?
A.The increase in oil demand in America is largely due to SUV.
B.It consumes more oil than other passenger vehicles.
C.No politicians would attack the use of SUV.
D.SUVs are a kind of light trucks.
答案：D
由第六段可知，SUV的耗油量比小轿车大，因此导致美国石油需求量的大幅上升，却被法律规定为轻型卡车，但没有政治家愿意去修改这项法律，故选项D与原文不符，应为正确答案。

4. "Outlays" in the seventh paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
A.taxes
B.money
C.incentives
D.tax increases
答案：B
由上下文可知，欧洲需要筹措资金保证传统能源向新型能源的转化，因此，选项B与原文一致，为正确答案。

5. What does the last paragraph suggest?
A.It is not likely that new energy resources will be adopted.
B.More tax will be levied on oil products.
C.People will become less dependent on oil.
D.People will buy cleaner new cars.
答案：A
本段最后一句表达了作者的看法，即新型能源很难被人们使用。

故选项A为正确答案。