Both Alan and Jason are experienced. You can ask______of them for help.
A.either
B.neither
C.none
D.all
A.either
B.neither
C.none
D.all
The two dissimilar characters, i.e. Harry and Alan are common in that______.
A.they are both weird
B.their parents are weird
C.they have unresolved issues
D.they have weird families
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
It was a little weird at first, Erin Tobin said, seeing Harry Potter right there on the stage without his pants, or indeed any of his clothes.
Not actually Harry Potter, of course, since he is fictional, but the next best thing. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the movies. Now 17. Mr. Radcliffe has cast off his wand, his broomstick and everything else to appear in the West End revival of Peter Shaffer's "Equus". He stars as Alan Strang, a disturbed young man who, in a distinctly un-Harry-Potterish moment of frenzied psychosexual madness, blinds six horses with a hoof pick.
To make it clear what audiences are in for, at least in part, photographs of Mr. Radcliffe's buff torso, stripped almost to the groin, have been used to advertise the production. It is as jarring as if, say, Anne Hathaway suddenly announced that instead of playing sweet-natured princesses and fashion-world ingénues, she wanted to appear onstage as a nude murderous prostitute.
To explain how is surprising the change of Radcliffe to the audience, the author mentions Anne "Equus" opened last week, and the consensus so far is that Mr. Radcliffe has successfully extricated himself from his cinematic alter ego. Considering that playing Harry Potter is practically all he has done in his career, this is no small achievement.
"I think he's a really good actor, and I sort of forgot about Harry Potter", said Ophelia Oates, 14, who saw the play over the weekend. "Anyway, you can't be Harry Potter forever".
In The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer said that "Daniel Radcliffe brilliantly succeeds m throwing off the mantle of Harry Potter, announcing himself as a thrilling stage actor of unexpected depth and range".
Mr. Radcliffe told The Daily Telegraph that "I thought it would be a bad idea to wait till the Potter films were all finished to do something else". There are still a few to go. The fifth, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", is scheduled for release on July 13, and Mr. Radcliffe has signed on for the final two installments as well. (Meanwhile, the seventh and last book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", will hit stores on July 21.)
Harry and Alan could not be more dissimilar as characters, even if both "come from quite weird backgrounds", as 13-year-old Ella Pitt, another recent theatergoer, put it. (And no. she declared, she was not too young for all the nakedness, swearing and sexuality.) Both characters have unresolved issues relating to their parents: Harry, because his are dead, and Alan, because his have driven him insane.
But when it comes to romance, for instance, the celluloid Harry has yet to kiss a girl; the big moment comes in the forthcoming film. Meanwhile, Alan in "Equus" not only engages in some serious equi-erotic nuzzling with an actor playing a horse, but is also onstage, fully nude, for 10 minutes, during which he nearly has sex with an equally naked young woman.
Hathaway. This is a______.
A.simile
B.comparison
C.hyperbole
D.analogy
Strange that this surprised. (9)_____ Alan Greenspan's frenetic cuts (10)_____ interest rates, times are good for underwriters and waders of bonds, core activities for Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, (11)_____ also recorded a sharp increase in profits. It has been a terrible (12)_____ for equity underwriters and for advisers on the small amounts of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) this year.
Merrill, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are three of the investment banks that gained (13)_____ during the boom in equity and M&A business, and they are now (14)_____ the most. Of the three, Merrill is weakest in bonds. It cut (15)_____ its fixed-income activities after the collapse of Lung-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998. As it happens, both Bear Stearns and Lehman have long been criticised for their weakness in equities.
Mr. Greenberg is famous for worrying about even the price of a paper-clip at Bear Stearns. This used to seem terribly (16)_____,but these days other Wall Street firms are (17)_____ about costs. Lay-offs are (18)_____ though not yet alarmingly—not least, because banks saw how Merrill Lynch lost (19)_____ when the markets rebounded quickly after the LTCM crisis. Still, if few (20)_____ of improvement show soon, expect real blood-letting on Wall Street.
A.cover
B.encapsulation
C.jacket
D.shell
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
Forget Iraq and budget deficits. The most serious political problem on both sides of the Atlantic is none of these. It is a difficulty that has dogged the ruling classes for millennia. It is the servant problem.
In Britain David Blunkett, the home secretary, has resigned over an embarrassment (or one of many embarrassments, in a story involving his ex-girlfriend, her husband, two pregnancies and some DNA) concerning a visa for a Filipina nanny employed by his mistress. His office speeded it through for reasons unconnected to the national shortage of unskilled labour. Mr. Blunkett resigned ahead of a report by Sir Alan Budd, an economist who is investigating the matter at the government's request.
In America Bernard Kerik, the president's nominee for the Department of Homeland Security, withdrew last week because he had carelessly employed a Mexican nanny whose Play-Doh skills were in better order than her paperwork. Mr. Kerik also remembered that he hadn't paid her taxes. The nominee has one or two other "issues" (an arrest warrant in 1998, and allegations of dodgy business dealings and extra-marital affairs). But employing an illegal nanny would probably have been enough to undo him, as it has several other cabinet and judicial appointees in recent years.
There is an easy answer to the servant problem—obvious to economists, if not to the less clear-sighted. Perhaps Sir Alan, a dismal scientist of impeccable rationality, will be thoughtful enough to point it out in his report.
Parents are not the only people who have difficulty getting visas for workers. All employers face restrictive immigration policies which raise labour costs. Some may respond by trying to fiddle the immigration system, but most deal with the matter by exporting jobs. In the age of the global economy, the solution to the servant problem is simple: rather than importing the nanny, offshore the children.
According to the text, the servant problem is to the ruling class what
A.the political problem to the ruler.
B.the embarrassment to the home secretary.
C.the chronic ailment to the patient.
D.the government's request to the economist.
What is Jason Ohler's attitude towards e-books?
A.Positive.
B.Indifferent.
C.Cautious.
D.Suspicious.
The views of Alan Greenspan and the author of the text on price bubbles are
A.complementary
B.identical
C.opposite
D.similar