According to what Chambers said, which of the following is correct

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

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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

More than 40 million Americans between the ages of 5 and 18 attend schools throughout the United States. About 2 million school-age children are taught at home. While home schooling offers an alternative to the school environment, it has become a controversial issue.

Many public school advocates take a harsh attitude toward home schoolers, perceiving their actions as the ultimate slap in the face of public education and a damaging move for the children. Yet, as public school officials realize they stand little to gain by remaining hostile to the home-school population, the hard lines seem to be softening a bit. Some public schools have moved closer to tolerance, and，even in some cases, are seeking cooperation with home schoolers. " We are becoming relatively tolerant of home schoolers. Let’s give the kids access to public school so they’ll see it’s not as terrible as they’ve been told, and they’ll want to come back, " says John Marshall, an education official.

Perhaps, but don’t count on it, say home-school advocates. Some home schoolers oppose that public school system because they have strong convictions that their approach to education—whether fueled by religious belief or the individual child’s interests and natural pace—is best. Other home schoolers contend " not so much that the schools teach heresy, but that schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately." "These parents are highly independent and strive to ’take responsibility’ for their own lives within a society that they define as bureaucratic and inefficient. " says Van Gallon.

But Howard Carol, spokesman for America’s largest teachers union, argues that home schooling parents are trying to hide their children from the real world, says Van Gallon. " Maybe we are going to run into people with problems, people that have a drug problem, people that have an alcohol problem, and teenage pregnancy. We have many problems that happen in our society and many of the children are victims. But shielding the children from the real mix of what happens every day is denying them something that they are going to need later in life. " Mr. Carol also questioned the competence of parents as teachers though he admitted that some home schoolers do better academically. " We want to make sure that a student is not denied the full range of curriculum experiences and appropriate materials, especially now with the new technology that is being introduced and the costs involved there. "

" The success of home schooling has been documented in standardized test scores administered by public school officials, " says Frank Bernet, the executive director of the National Association of College Admission Councilors. " I know why they are doing it, but I wonder why they can’t work with school officials and teachers to make the school what they want it to be. " The response from home schoolers: " We have tried that. NOW it’s time to strike out on our own. \

For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French, was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing.

I enrolled as a pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by a Mr Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil had sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confused entrepreneur: "Non, M. Jones. Jane suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas!" (No Mr. Jones, I’m NOT French, I’m not, not, NOT!). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in approach.

For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, hearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westemer. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be nais, sah ’ab or sooken.

Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just released, I was childishly elated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right, I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, no-one could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr Jones.