It’s a Christmas tradition that’s more than half a century old. And it happened completely by accident.
It started in 1955, when a local Sears store in Colorado Springs, Colorado printed an ad, which included a spedial phone mumber kids could call to know where Santa’s sleigh was at any given moment. Unfortunately, someone made a mistake in printing the phone mumber and kids were calling the wrong line.
A Colonel(上校) named Henry Shoup began answering his phong at what would become NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command. At first, he thought it was a simple error of one caller.
But as the phone ketp ringing and tiny voices kept asking about Santa, Shoup realized he couldn’t disappoint them. So he told the staff to issue updates to any one asking about the location of Santa.
The wrong turned into a custom of the holiday and kept growing in popularity, and NORAD finally decided to make it permanent.
It’s become a holiday favourite ever since, adapting to whatever new technology has come along since. In the early days, it was a phone line. Then in the 60s, NORAD put out a special series of “reports” that was played on hundreds of radio stations across North America, broadcasting the Jolly Old Elf’s exact position on Christmas Eve.
Think of it as kind of an early GPS without the computer gear.
Finally ,came the Internet and NORAD has now transferred its annual watch onto the Web, with a site devoted to keeping tabs on the most famous journey in the world—what you might call the real amazing race, an around-the-world mission that has to be finished within 24hours.
This year’s entry allows kids to track Santa in 3Dusing Google Earth and play games at the North Pole using the Kids Countdown Section, and it even offers Santa Cams which are only operational on the night before Christmas.
36.Why did children keep calling Henry Shoup?
A.Because they wanted to play a joke on him.
B. Because they wanted to amuse him.
C.Because he knew where Santa exactly was.
D.Because they wanted to know where Santa’s sleigh was.
37.What did Colonel Henry Shoup do when more and more children kept calling?
A.He became annoyed and decided to tell them the truth.
B.He became excited and jioned them in searching Santa.
C.He thought quickly and took it seriously to satisfy their needs.
D.He laughed at them and took no notice of their calls.
38.What does “Jolly Old Elf” in Paragraph 6 most probably refer to?
A.Santa Claus.
B.Colonel Henry Shoup.
C.NOARD.
D.The staff in Henry Shoup’s charge.
39.According to the passage, how did people learn about the Jolly Old Elf’s exact position in the 1960s?
A.By calling a special phone mumber.
B.By listening to a special series of reports over the radio.
C.With the help of a kind of early GPS.
D.By scanning the spedial column in the newspaper.
40.The passage mainly tells us       .
A.an old favorite holiday that develops along with new technology
B.50-year-old tracking Santa tradition that started by accident
C.a real amazing race, an around-the-world mission within 24 hours
D.a Colonel and the North American Aerospace Defence Command

Paperback: 264 pages

Publisher:. Sams (March 29,2005)

ISBN: 0672327627

Product Dimensions: 8.4x5.5x0.6 inches

OVERVIEW

This book offers straightforward practical answers when you need fast results. By working through each 10-minute lesson, you'll learn what you need to begin to use the PHP scripting language to make your websites interactive and dynamic.

REVIEW

When I first laid eyes on this book and its title, Teach Yourself PHP in 10 minutes, my first thought was that I was going to see this!  So I opened it up and figured I'd look through it for ten minutes and see what would hit me. Well, 10 minutes turned into 20, 20 into 30 and 30 into a valuable resource that sits on my desk.

Not only are the lessons within brief, but they are very easy to understand, well presented and very easy to understand for the beginner. Each lesson comes with tips to point out shortcuts, cautions to help you avoid common mistakes and notes to additional infomation. This book can be used in two ways, as a reference or as a complete tutorial on PHP basics. That alone is something that is very rare in teaching type books these days.

    Some of the more valuable and informative lessons will take you into the areas of:

--Strings and variables

--Processing HTML forms

--Controlling and filtering data

--User authentication

--Cookies and sessions

--Security practices

--Configuring PHP and more!!!

The book is pretty basic for experienced PHP coders, but for new or intermediate users this book is worth more than the small $19.99 CAN suggested price. Although the cover suggests it covers PHP 5.0, the coding found within also applies to PHP 4.X

CONCLUSION

This book completely surprised me with its value and does indeed teach you in ten minutes what other books claim to do in 24 hours. Full marks to author Chris Newman for this handy guide.

1.Where can you see this short passage?

    A. In a section for ads in a website.           B. In a book shop.

    C. In a science magazine.                       D. In a fiction novel.

2.What is the book about according to the passage?

    A. How to make a website interactive and dynamic.    B. How to do things in ten minutes.

    C. How to deal with all kinds of problems.           D. How to configure PHP and more.

3.What is the purpose of the passage?

     A. To tell us something about a new book.          B. To tell us something about PHP.

     C. To make an ad for the book to sell it.            D. To tell us how to use the book.

4.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

     A. You can learn all kinds of things within only ten minutes.

     B. It is a good book only for beginners.

     C. The book is valuable for both experienced PHP coders and beginners.

     D. The book is more useful for new or intermediate users than the experienced PHP coders.

5.What is the price of the book?

A. $19.99 CAN.    B. US$19.99   C. The author doesn't tell us.     D.  $ 20.

Twenty-six years after a terrible bicycle accident left her comatose（昏迷） for two months and with permanent brain injuries, Barbara Buchan, performs many actions more slowly than others. But on September 10 in Beijing, Buchan, at 52, the oldest member of the United States Paralympic team, broke the record and won the gold medal for her disability class in the individual 3,000-meter cycling pursuit.
“You can be very upset at the world and have everyone take care of you,” Buchan said by telephone from Beijing, “or get back on your feet again.”
Buchan first dreamed of Olympic gold at age 15 while watching the 1972 Munich Games. She became a top American cyclist by July 1982, when a terrible road-race crash injured her brain and left doctors doubtful about whether she would survive. She was wearing only a soft leather helmet at the time; her accident made the rule put into practice that cyclists wear the hard-shell helmets that are now common.
Buchan recovered enough of her athletic ability to run track in the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul, where she won a silver medal in the 800 meters. Women’s cycling was not included in the Paralympics yet, so Buchan trained to the point where she raced against men in the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney, Australia — she finished 9th and 10th in two races — and then successfully fought for a separate women’s cycling program beginning in 2004 in Athens, where she did not get a medal.
Even though she was approaching her 50s, Buchan kept racing and again made the United States Paralympic team for Beijing — where she is twice the age of most of her teammates and competitors.
“Barbara’s almost the leader of our team — she’s been through it all,” said Craig Griffin, the United States cycling coach. “She’s never retired. She’s never let her body go and then come back. I don’t think age is as big of a deal as people make it out to be.”
【小题1】According to the passage, after the accident,  ____________.

So you thought the hamburger was the world’s most popular fast food? After all, McDonald’s Golden Arches span（跨越）the globe（全球）. But no, there is another truly universal fast food, the ultimate（极好的）fast food. It’s easy to make, easy to serve, much more varied than the hamburger, can be eaten with the hands and it’s delivered to your front door or served in fancy restaurants. It’s been one of America’s favourite foods for over 50 years. It is, of course, the pizza.
It’s kind of silly to talk about the moment when pizza was “invented”. It changed over the years, but one thing’s for certain—it’s been around for a very long time. The idea of using pieces of flat, round bread as plates came from the Greeks. They called them “plakuntos” and ate them with various simple toppings（配料）such as oil, garlic（大蒜）, onions and herbs. The Romans enjoyed eating something similar and called it “picea”. By about 1000 AD in the city of Naples, “picea” had become “pizza” and people were experimenting with more toppings: cheese, ham, anchovies and finally the tomato, brought to Italy from Mexico and Peru in the sixteenth century. Naples became the pizza capital of the world. In 1889, King UmbertoⅠand Queen Margherita heard about pizza and asked to try it. They invited pizza maker, Raffele Esposito, to make it for them. He decided to make the pizza like the Italian flag, so he used red tomatoes, white mozzarella cheese and green basil leaves. The Queen loved it and the new pizza was named “Pizza Margherita” in her honour.
Pizza went to America with the Italians at the end of the nineteenth century. The first pizzeria in the United States was opened in 1905 at 53 Spring Street, New York City, by Gennaro Lombardi. But the popularity of pizza really exploded when American soldiers returned from Italy after World WarⅡ and raved about(夸赞) “that great Italian dish”. Americans are now the greatest producers and consumers of pizza in the world.
【小题1】Which is the correct order of the changes of pizza?

  根据对话内容，从对话后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。选项中有两项为多余选项。(其中E=AB；F=AC；G=AD)

M：Mr Smith, have you ever been to the Great Wall?

W：No, actually I’ve never been there.   1.  

M：Would you like to go to the Great Wall?

W： 2.  I’ve been waiting for long. I’d be more than glad to.

M：All right. We’ll go by car. Can you get ready by eight?

W：  3.   I’ll try to make it. Do you think I should ask the hotel to pack me a lunch?

M： 4.  I’ll take care of that. There’s a good restaurant there. Oh, it is likely to be windy on the wall at this time of year.

W： 5.  Shall I take a coat with me?

M：Yes, you’d better take a coat or a sweater. Well, I’ll be off now. I’ve got to see about the arrangements. See you tomorrow.

W：Till then.

A．No, I think there’s no need.

B．Sorry, but I am terribly busy.

C．Yes, I think that’s a good idea.

D．That’ll be fine.

E．Is that so?

F．Of course I’ve heard much about that.

G．I don’t think so