About once a month I have to go to Bedford for my work. One day I went into a   21  there to have something to   22  . The waiter took my coat and put it in a small room.
About an hour later I was   23  to go. The waiter   24  me my coat. Something fell out of the pocket onto the floor. It was a small white box. I took a   25  look at the   26  . “Oh, you’ve brought   27  coat,” I said to the waiter. “It looks very much like mine,  28  it is quite new, and this isn’t my box, either.”
“Oh, then I   29  someone has taken your coat and left his,” said the waiter. “This kind of thing   30  sometimes.”
I opened the box. There was a beautiful gold   31  in it. The waiter and I   32  to go to the police station.
“Has anyone lost a ring?” I asked at the station.
“Yes,” said a policeman. “A young man who came in this morning lost a ring, he lost it in London.”
He   33  the young man. A few minutes later, the man arrived.
“Yes, this is my ring,” he said. “How can I   34  you, sir? You see, I paid a lot of money for this ring and   35  I lost it on the train!”
After I told him the   36  of the coat, he said, “You haven’t been on the train. I haven’t been in the hotel, so how did my ring   37  in the coat?”
“Did anyone sit or stand next to you on the train?” asked the policeman.
“Yes,” said the young man. “But I don’t remember his face.”
“You may remember this   38  ,” said the policeman. “Was it like this one?”
“Yes, it was,” said the young man. “But my friend here isn’t the thief.”
The policeman laughed. “No,” he said. “The thief on the train stole your ring, and   39  our friend here, he went into the hotel to get some food. Only he didn’t take the   40  coat away with him.”

  If we bought only things we needed, there would be enough for everybody. What do we need? What you need depends on how old you are and your way of life. Rearrange the list of things you can buy and put the things you think we most need at the top of the list.

   Coat             Designer jeans          Water       CD player

  Dental check up   Restaurant meal     Telephone   Jewelry

  Food          Shampoo             MP3 player  Beer

  Toothpaste        Bar of chocolate        Cushion covers

     If we don’t need to buy so much, we don’t need to work so much. We can take part-time jobs or reduce our working day from eight hours to six hours. Some people are leaving very well paid jobs to live a healthier life in the countryside or a more exciting life abroad. Parents can spend more time with their children and the unemployed are given more opportunities to work.

   If we start to respect saving the earth more than spending money, we will become ‘conservers’ (保护者). When we are conservers, we try to choose environmentally friendly products that last a long time. We may find growing our own vegetables or making our own clothes more rewarding than buying them.

   Next time you go shopping, think about what you really need to buy. Don’t deprive (剥夺) yourself of things you like, but decide what you should buy before you go out, so that you won’t be influenced by advertisements or promotions. If it is more expensive to buy goods that don’t have much packaging and things that are more durable (耐用的), buy less. If you can choose to work less, decide which things you would like to make, do or grow yourself. Even though you have less money, your life will become richer.

                                                 by Julie Bray

From the passage, we can see the author suggests us consumers ______.

  A. find out more about a product instead of buying blindly

  B. consider what we really need before going shopping

  C. avoid regret at not buying enough

  D. find a real bargain

. The writer will agree with you if you buy products that are ______.

  A. beautifully packaged       B. extremely cheap

  C. usable for a long time         D. fashionable now

According to the passage, if we don’t need to buy so much, the benefits  

  will include ______.

  a. we will have more time enjoying life

  b. the employment rate will increase

  c. we will get better paid jobs

  d. we as consumers will have more choices of what to buy

  A. abc    B. abd       C. ab      D. ad

This passage is mainly written to _____.

  A. persuade people to buy less and buy environmentally friendly products

  B. put forward some questions so that you can become a smart buyer

  C. introduce some good ways to make a wiser choice when shopping

  D. criticize the consumer society in which people buy too much

Did you know that women’s brains are smaller than men’s? The average women’s brain weighs 10% less than men’s. Since research has shown that the bigger the brain, the cleverer the animal, men must be more intelligent(聪明的) than women. Right? Wrong. Men and women always score similarly on intelligence tests, despite the difference in brain size. Why? After years of study, researchers have concluded that it’s what’s inside that matters, not just the size of the brain. The brain consists of “grey matter” and “white matter” while men have more of latter, the amount of “thinking” brain is almost exactly the same in both sexes.
It has been suggested that smaller brain appears to work faster, perhaps because the two sides of the brain are better connected in women. This means that little girls tend to learn to speak earlier, and that women can understand sorts of information from different sources at the same time. When it comes to talking to the boss on the phone, cooking dinner and keeping an eye on the baby all at the same time, it’s women who come out on top every time.
There are other important differences between two sexes. As white matter is the key to spatial(空间的) tasks, men know better where things are in relation to other things. “A great footballer always knows where he is in relation to the other players, and he knows where to go,” says one researcher. That may explain one of life’s great mysteries: why men refuse to ask for directions … and women often need to!
The differences begin when fetuses(胎儿) are about mine weeks old, which can be seen in the action of children ad young as one. A boy would try to climb a barrier (障碍物) before him or push it down while a girl would attract help from others. These brain differences also explain the fact that more men take up jobs that require good spatial skills, while more women speech skills. It may all go back to our ancestors, among whom women needed speech skills to take care of their babies and men needed spatial skills to hunt, according to one research.
If all this disappoints you, it shouldn’t. “The brain changes throughout our lives according to what we do with it.” says a biologist.
【小题1】Which of the following is true according to the first paragraph?

When I was a college student, I did a lot of traveling abroad. That was because a professor   【小题1】  me to do so. She said, “Now it is the time for you to travel around the world,   【小题2】  your knowledge through actual experiences and have fun?” I   【小题3】  her.
Since I started to work for a   【小题4】  company, however, I have done most of my traveling through the Internet. By using the Internet, I have seen the  【小题5】  of many cities on my computer screen. And I have really made business   【小题6】, too. With the help of the Internet, I have also got   【小题7】  about food in different countries.
Therefore, I was beginning to feel that actual trips were   【小题8】  necessary when I happened to read a famous chef's (厨师) comment on the Internet. He said, “It is very difficult to have real Italian food in a foreign country, because we enjoy food and the
 【小题9】  around us at the same time. So why don't you fly over to Italy and enjoy real Italian   【小题10】? “Those words reminded me of my  【小题11】 advice. As information technology   【小题12】 , you might be able to do without making some real trips. But this also means that you will miss the various   【小题13】  you can get from traveling.
Today there are people who   【小题14】  direct communication with others and spend much of their time on the Internet. It is not surprising to see a group of people 【小题15】 not with each other but into their micro phones. It seems as if such people are  【小题16】 by an invisible wall. They seem to be losing out on a good chance to  【小题17】  and talk with other people. I do not think that they are taking good advantage of information technology. We should use information technology as a tool to make our daily   【小题18】  more fruitful. However, we should never let it   【小题19】  our time for face to -face communication. Let's make use of information technology more   【小题20】 , and have great fun in experiencing the actual world.

I watch her and her mother decorate her college dormitory room. Everything is in place organized and arranged. Her room nicely accommodates not only her clothes and bric-a-brac(小摆设), but her ___36___ as well. I begin to accept that her room at home is no longer hers. It is now ours, our room for her when she ___37___.
I ___38___ myself thinking of when I held her in the cradle of my arm, in the chair alongside my wife's hospital bed. One day old. So ___39___, so beautiful, so perfect, so ___40___ dependent on her new, ___41___ parents. Time marches relentlessly(不停地).
She looks up now, catching me ___42___ at her, causing her to say to her mother." Mom, Dad's looking at me ___43____”.
The last few days, I touch her arm, her face--- ___44___ that when my wife and I return home, she will not be ___45___ us. I have so much to say, but no ___46___ with which to say it.
My ___47___ changed from the day I drove this child home from the hospital. I saw myself ___48___ that day, and it has led to a lot of places that I would never have found on my own.
She says, “It'll be all right, Dad. I'll be home from school ___49___.” I tell her she will have a great year but I say little else. I am afraid somehow to speak and I only hold on to our good-bye hug a little longer, a little ___50___.
I gaze into her eyes and ___51___to go. My wife's eyes follow her as she leaves us. ___52___ do not. Maybe if I don't look, I can imagine that she really hasn't ___53___ ; I know that what she is embarking upon(开始) is exciting and wonderful. I remember what the world looked like to me ___54___ everything was new.
As I walk to the car with my wife at my side, my eyes are wet, my heart is sore, and I realize that my life is ___55___ forever.