Questions 19 to 21 are based on the conversation you have just heard. Questions 19 to 21 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

正确

错误

In the birthday breakfast, the employees can only praise the president and express how satisfied they are with the company.

The directors or VPs will also be present at the birthday breakfast.

The birthday breakfast can make the president exactly know what is occurring in his company.

The expression benchmarking has become one of the fashionable words in current management discussion. The (19) first appeared in the United States in the 1970s, but has now (20) world-wide recognition. But what (21) does it mean and should your company be practicing it Benchmarking (22) learning about your own practices, learning about the best practices of others, and then making (23) for improvement that will enable you to meet or beat the beast in the world. The essential element is not (24) imitating what other companies do but being able to (25) the best of other firms’ practices to your own (26) . Instead of aiming to improve only against previous performance and scores, companies can use benchmarking to inject an element of imagination and common (27) into their search for progress. It is a process which forces companies to look closely at those activities which they may have been taking for granted and (28) them with the activities of other, world-beating companies. Self-criticism is at the (29) of process, although in some cases this may (30) managers who are reluctant to question long-established practices. The process of identifying best practice in other companies does not just mean looking closely at your (31) . It might also include (32) companies which use similar processes to your own, even though they are producing different goods. The point is to look at the process (33) than the product.

It seems impossible to have an honest conversation about global warming. I say this after diligently perusing the British government’s huge report released last week by Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank and now a high civil servant. The report is a masterpiece of misleading public relations. It foresees dire consequences if global warming isn’t curbed: a worldwide depression and flooding of many coastal cities. Meanwhile, the costs of minimizing these awful outcomes are small: only 1 percent of world economic output in 2050.

No sane person could fail to conclude that we should conquer global warming instantly, if not sooner. Who could disagree Well, me. Stem’s headlined conclusions are intellectual fictions. They’re essentially fabrications to justify an aggressive anti-global-warming agenda. The danger of that is that we’d end up with the worst of both worlds: a program that harms the economy without much cutting of greenhouse gases.

Let me throw some messy realities onto Stern’s tidy picture. In the global-warming debate, there’s a big gap between public rhetoric and public behavior. Greenhouse emissions continue to rise despite many earnest pledges to control them. Just last week, the United Nations reported that of the 41 countries it monitors (not including most developing nations), 34 had increased greenhouse emissions from 2000 to 2004. These include most countries committed to reducing emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

Why is this In rich democracies, policies that might curb greenhouse gases require politicians and the public to act in exceptionally "enlightened" ways. They have to accept "pain" now for benefits that won’t materialize for decades, probably after they’re dead. And even if rich countries cut emissions, it won’t make much difference unless poor countries do likewise and so far, they’ve refused because that might jeopardize their economic growth and poverty-reduction efforts.

The notion that there’s only a modest tension between suppressing greenhouse gases and sustaining economic growth is highly dubious. Stern arrives at his trivial costs—that 1 percent of world GDP in 2050—by essentially assuming them. His estimates presume that, with proper policies, technological improvements will automatically reconcile declining emissions with adequate economic growth. This is a heroic leap. To check warming, Stern wants annual emissions 25 percent below current levels by 2050. The IEA projects that economic growth by 2050 would more than double emissions. At present, we can’t bridge that gap.

The other great distortion in Stern’s report involves global warming’s effects. No one knows what these might be, because we don’t know how much warming might occur, when, where, or how easily people might adapt. Stern’s horrific specter distills many of the most terrifying guesses, including some imagined for the 22nd century, and implies they’re imminent. The idea is to scare people while reassuring them that policies to avert calamity, if started now, would be fairly easy and inexpensive.

末级科目

上级科目

末级科目和上级科目

末级科目或上级科目

正确

错误

Digital photography is still new enough that most of us have yet to form an opinion about it (1) develop a point of view. But this hasn’t stopped many film and computer fans from agreeing (2) the early conventional wisdom about digital cameras — they’re neat (3) for your PC, but they’re not suitable for everyday picture taking.

The fans are wrong. More than anything else, digital cameras are radically (4) what photography means and what it can be. The venerable medium of photography (5) we know, it is beginning to seem out of (6) with the way we live. In our computer and camcorder (7) , saving pictures as digital (8) and watching them on TV is no less practical — and in many ways more (9) than fumbling with rolls of film that must be sent off to be (10) .

Paper is also terribly (11) . Pictures that are incorrectly framed, (12) , or lighted are nonetheless committed to film and ultimately processed into prints.

The digital medium changes the (13) . Still images that are (14) digitally can immediately be shown on a computer (15) , a TV screen, or a small liquid crystal display (LCD) built right into the camera. And since the points of light that (16) an image are saved as a series of digital bits in electronic memory, (17) being permanently etched onto film, they can be erased, retouched, and transmitted (18) .

What’s it like to (19) with one of these digital cameras It’s a little like a first date — exciting, confusing and fraught with (20) .

正确

错误