Almost a decade ago, the federal government dropped $10 million for an Earth-monitoring satellite that never made it into space. Today it sits in a closet in Maryland. Cost to taxpayers for storing it: $1 million a year. And that's just what's hiding in one closet. Who knows what's in the rest of them?

Because we think the government should be held to at least the same standards as a publicly traded company, and because as taxpayers, we're America's shareholders, we performed an audit （财务检查）of sorts of the federal books. We're not economists, but we do have common sense. We tried to get help from Congressional staffers from both parties, as well as various watchdog groups and agencies. In the end, we found that the federal government wastes nearly $1 trillion every year.

That's roughly equal to the amount collected annually by the Internal Revenue Service in personal income taxes. Put another way, it's also equal to about one-third of the country's $2.9 trillion total annual budget. And reclaiming that lost trillion could help wipe out the country's annual budget deficit（赤字）, improve education, and provide health insurance for those who don't have it.

So how do you define "waste"? David Walker of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog agency, calls it "the government's failure to give taxpayers the most for their money." For our part, we used the kind of household test you would use on a piece of meat sitting in your refrigerator: If it smells rotten, it's waste. Our government regularly pays for products and services it never gets, wildly overpays companies to do things it could do more cheaply itself, loses money outright due to lax（不严格的）accounting and oversight, and spends money randomly on unnecessary programs.

How exactly does the federal government waste your hard-earned tax dollars? We've identified what we consider ten of the worst ways.

1.The underlined sentence in Paragraph1 really means         .

A．there are many other closets     B．there are some other satellites

C．there is something else in the closets    D．the waste may be quite amazing

2.Which of the following can best describe the feeling of the author?

    A．Annoyed.       B．Calm.          C．Surprised.     D．Not concerned.

3.Which of the following statements may be right?

    A．The country’s annual budget is usually decided by the public.

    B．The government failed in launching the satellite.

    C．The government is only wasting money in space experiments.

    D．The amount collected annually in personal income taxes is equal to the country’s budget.

4.The best title for the passage would be         .

    A．Protecting Our Rights!          

    B．Our Country Is In Danger!

    C．The Government Is Wasting Our Tax Dollars!

    D．How to Prevent Government from Wasting Money!

5.What might be talked about if the passage is continued?

    A．The government’s taking some steps to stop wasting taxes.

    B．Presenting people’s feelings against the government’s wasting taxes.

    C．Giving suggestion to help the government solve the financial problem.

    D．Listing how the government is wasting taxes.

Roger Alvarez, 22, was one of the 52 percent of students who didn’t make it through his senior year at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles.

    He dropped out several years ago, but by the time he was in ninth grade, Alvarez says he already knew he wasn’t going to graduate.

    “There’s a certain amount of knowledge you have to have when you enter in a specific grade, and I didn’t have it.” Alvarez says,“Every class I used to go in, I was like, ‘Do I know this? I don’t know this.’”

    It was a shameful attitude, he tells his former English teacher, Antero Garcia, 29.

    “You were determined to help me, but what was I willing to give? I could have actually tried.”

    For his part, Garcia wants to know how he could have reached out to Alvarez better, but Alvarez says Garcia had always been helpful.

    “I mean, you could cheer me up, and then I see other students doing way better,” Alvarez says,“So then, I get nervous. I get stuck, and then my motivation goes to the floor.” He felt the situation was hopeless.

    “You talked to me like if I could do it, but inside me, I knew I couldn’t.” he tells Garcia,“I just didn’t want you to think that I’m…stupid.”

    Now, school is a life tool that Alvarez says he’s missing—but his teacher isn’t to blame.

    “Always, I just wanted you to know…you were a good teacher, and I always respected you.” he tells Garcia,“Some teachers, I felt like they only wanted to teach a certain group of people. But you looked at me and you paid attention.”

    “Maybe it didn’t get me to graduate, but there’re a lot of teachers, they don’t take the time to take a look. And it was never your fault.”

    Alvarez now works the night shift at a loading dock(码头). He still hopes to get his degree one day.

1.When Alvarez entered a grade, he was sure that ___________.

A. he wasn’t going to pass the class

B. he would do better than other students

C. he might learn an amount of knowledge

D. he would try his best to learn at class

2.By saying “my motivation goes to the floor”,  Alvarez meant __________.

A. he hid his goal from others              B. he lost heart gradually

C. he built up his motivation               D. he fell to the ground completely

3.In the opinion of Alvarez, most teachers _______.

A. paid no attention to teaching             B. had no time to read books

C. didn’t care about what he did             D. showed no respect to students

4.The passage mainly tells us that _________.

A. a dropout complains about being treated badly

B. a dropout plans to get his degree again

C. a dropout shows respect for not graduating

D. a dropout has thanks to his teacher not blame

Someday a stranger will read your e-mail without your permission or scan the websites you’ve visited. Or perhaps someone will casually glance through your credit card purchases or cell phone bills to find out your shopping preferences or calling habits.

In fact, it’s likely that some of these things have already happened to you. Who would watch you without your permission? It might be a husband or wife, a girlfriend, a marketing company, a boss, a police or a criminal. Whoever it is, they will see you in a way you’ve never intended to be seen.

Some experts tell us boundaries are healthy, and it’s important to reveal (暴露) yourself to your friends, family and lovers in stages, at proper times. But few boundaries could remain. The digital equipment makes it easy for strangers to know who you are, where you are and what you like. In some cases, a simple Google search can even reveal what you think. Like it or not, increasingly we live in a world where you simply cannot keep a secret.

   The key question is: Does that matter?

   When opinion polls ask Americans about privacy, most say they are concerned about losing it. A survey shows that 60 percent of them feel their privacy is “slipping away, and that bothers me.”

But people often say one thing and do another. Only a tiny number of Americans change the behaviors in an effort to protect their privacy. Few people turn down a discount at tollbooths (收费站) to avoid using the EZ-Pass system that can track your automobile movements. And few turn down supermarket loyalty cards. Privacy economist Alessandro Acquits has run a series of tests, and these tests show that the majority of Americans will not keep personal secret just in order to get their hands on a pitiful 50-cents-off coupon (优惠券)

   But privacy does matter—at least sometimes. It’s like health: when you have it, you don’t notice it. Only when it’s gone, do you wish you’d done more to protect it. So, when it comes to privacy, why do so many people say one thing and do another? And what can be done about it?

What would be the experts advise on the relationships between friends?

   A. Friends should open their hearts to each other.

   B. Friends should always be faithful to each other.

  C. There should be a distance even between friends.

   D. There should be fewer secrets between friends.

The author says “we live in a world where you simply cannot keep a secret” because ______.

   A. modern society has finally entered a much opened society

   B. people leave privacy around when using modern technology

   C. there are always people who are curious about others’ affairs

   D. many search engines profit by selling people’s privacy

According to Alessandro Acquits, most Americans _________.

   A. like to exchange their personal secret for the commercial benefit

   B. aren’t interested in the pitiful commercial benefit to keep their personal secret

   C. pay no attention to their personal secret for the commercial benefit

   D. can’t keep the balance between their personal secret and the commercial benefit

The best title for the passage could be _________?

   A. Is Privacy As Important As Health

   B. What Can Be Done to Protect the Privacy

   C. Does Privacy Matter

   D. Does Modern Technology Reveal Privacy

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two - headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl -friend.

No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

1.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is ____ .

2.According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is ____ .

3.The advantage claimed (提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it ____.

4.The author's mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that ______.

5.One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.

Google launched its indoor maps feature in Singapore on Tuesday, ______ the city state the second country in Asia to have it.

A．to make           B．make             C．making           D．having made