题目内容
Some business books are like a CD recorded by a one-hit-wonder pop star. On the CD, the star's original hit is padded with dross hurriedly bundled together to cash in on the star's ephemeral fame. Consumers, at the end of the day, regret not having bought just the original hit song.
Work force Crisis grew out of an article by the same authors that appeared in the Harvard Business Review in March 200,1. Called It's Time to Retire Retirement, it achieved fame of a sort when it won the McKinsey Prize, an award granted annually to the "most significant" article to have appeared in the publication during the previous year. It gained even more fame by association, being joint winner that year with what turned out to be Peter Drucker's last article What Makes an Effective Executive for the publication.
Now here is the CD extension of that original hit. It takes the basic thesis of the article that the long-standing corporate practice of investing heavily in youth and pushing out older workers must change, "or companies will find themselves running off a demographic cliff as baby boomers age" and puffs it out to the 200-plus pages that hook publishers demand as a minimum.
The authors' original article was already on shaky ground in stating that, as baby-boomers retire (people born between 1946 and 1964, the oldest of whom are just now reaching 60), "there won't be nearly enough young people entering the workforce to compensate for the exodus". An article in the August 2003 issue of Organizational Dynamics, by Peter Cappelli of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, had already knocked that idea on the head. Mr. Cappelli took issue with the popular rumour that the retirement of baby boomers will bring about a shortage of labour. At least in America, there are all sorts of ways in which the labour market will compensate. Many baby-boomers, for instance, will work longer; and although the next generation is some 16% smaller than the baby boom generation？ the generation after that is bigger than both of them. Then there is migration and offshoring to smooth the imbalance even further.
Curiously, both sides cited the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in support of their case: Mr. Cappelli quoting its estimate that the US labour force will rise from 153m in 2000 to 159m in 2010; Mr. Dychtwald and his colleagues saying that the bureau "projects a shortfall of 10m workers in the United States in 2010". First there are statistics; and then there is what you want them to say.
The debate has moved on from being about labour shortages to being about the waste of resources involved in allowing workers to retire at what is, given current life expectancy and standards of health, the relatively young age of 60 65. To give Work force Crisis its due, it dwells only briefly at the beginning on statistical pyrotechnics to prove that "a large and prolonged worker shortage could severely reduce our standard of living". It then eases into a discussion about ways in which companies can redesign work in order to bang on to the workers they want to hang on to, regardless of age, in an era when people hop from employer to employer like never before. But it is more like elevator muzak than the hit first recorded in the Harvard Business Review.
The word "ephemeral" in the first paragraph probably means ______.
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Which of the following statements about the strike is TRUE？
Then the first students to take SAT: The Sequel were seen stumbling out of the testing centers as if they had just run a marathon, and all the happy talks ended. With the three hours and 45 minutes stretching to five hours with breaks and instructions, it got worse. Nobody is sure how, but moisture in some SAT answer sheets caused pencil marks to bleed or fade, producing more than 5,000 tests with the wrong scores. Even after that was fixed, several universities reported a sharp drop in their applicants' average scores, which many attributed to exhaustion, and more colleges told applicants they would no longer have to take the SAT.
All of which stoked interest in the ACT, the SAT's less famous and less feared rival based in Iowa City, Iowa. The shorter test is now becoming a welcome alternative for many high schoolers who no longer see a need to endure the usual SAT trauma. "I think the ACT is a true player in the college-admissions game these days," says Robyn Lady, until recently a college counselor at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Although most Jefferson students still take the SAT, the number of ACTs there has tripled in the last two years. It's a shift that, if it continues, could change the balance of entrance test power, since the Fairfax County, Va. , magnet sends more kids to the fry League than almost any other U.S. school.
The SAT, with a maximum 2,400 points, and the ACT, with a maximum 36 points, are scored differently, but otherwise are no more different from each other than American football differs from the Canadian version. Students usually do equally well on each. The SAT's new 25 minute essay is required, while the ACT's essay is optional. The SAT is three hours and 45 minutes long. The comparable ACT is three hours and 25 minutes. The SAT has three sections: critical reading, math and writing. The ACT has math, science, reading and English sections, plus optional writing. The ACT with the writing test costs $ 43, more than the SAT's $ 41.50, but the ACT is only $ 29 without the writing section.
Several high school guidance counselors say they assume the ACT, with 1.2 million test takers in the class of 2005 compared with 1.5 million for the SAT, will eventually catch up, in part because so many educators are advising their students to try both. Wendy Andreen, counselor at Memorial Senior High School in Houston--where the SAT has been supreme--says she tells students every year they should take both tests to be safe, and many are beginning to listen, with ACTs up 18 percent since 2002. Deb Shaver, director of admissions at Smith College, says counselors are steering students to the ACT "because there is less hysteria surrounding the ACTs, and students feel less stressed about taking the test."
The mistakes made in the scoring of the October 2005 SAT by Pearson Educational Measurement, the College Board's subcontractor, have no; been forgotten, counselors say. The SAT suffered from damaging news stories as details of the errors came out bit by bit. In the end, 4,411 students had scores reported to colleges that were lower than they actually earned and had to be corrected; 17 percent of the corrections were for more than 40 points. College Board president Caston Caperton apologized, saying the mishap "brings humility, and humility makes us more aware, empathetic and respectful of others."
But ma
SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文： South Africa's black miners have observed a one-day strike to mourn the death of one hundred and seventy-seven of their co-workers killed in a fire at the Kinross gold mine last month. Workers in other industries aim participated in the symbolic action. More than a quarter of a million black miners were on strike to protest their colleagues' deaths, about half the country's total of 600,000 gold and coal miners, costing the mining industry an estimated $ 4,000,000. The stay-away was total at the Kinross gold mine where last month's disaster occurred. Black miners stayed inside their barrack--like hostels. Reporters were barred from the mine. In central Johannesburg, a protest meeting was held by the Black National Union of Mineworkers which called the strike action. A union, spokesman said miners had gathered not to mourn, but to commit themselves to liberation from apartheid and economic exploitation. White church leader, Bayers Nordea, told the crowd, "The accident at Kinross need never have occurred, and the one hundred and seventy-seven men need not have died."
The strike has broken out in South Africa because ______.
Meanwhile, the mother arms herself with returns from the last trip. Her two young daughters fro get games of flashlight tag or favorite TV shows and strap on tennis shoes and seatbelts: and they're off. On summer nights, when it's light until after, the fireflies arrive, the air is heavy and moist. The daughters unroll their windows and stick the whole of their heads out into the slate blue sky, feeling full force the sweaty, honey suckle air. In the cold mall, their rubber soles squeak on shiny linoleum squares. The younger daughter tries not to step on any cracks. The older daughter keeps a straight-ahead gaze; her sullen eyes count down each errand as it's dune.
It is not until the third or, on a good night, the fourth errand that the trouble begins. The girls have wandered over to examine rainbow beach towels, perhaps, or some kind of pink ruffled bedspread. The mother's voice finds them from a few aisles away.
Dinner squirms in the daughters' stomachs. Now comes that what if I-threw-up-right this second？ or where-is-a-rabbit-hole-for-me-to-fall-into？ feeling that they get around this time of evening, at the mall. The older one shakes her ponytails at the younger one. Her blue eyes hiss the careful-don't-cry warning, but the younger one's cheeks only get redder. Toe by toe, the daughters edge towards housewares where they finger lace placemats or trace patterns in the store carpet with sneakered soles. The mother's voice still finds them, shaking with rage. Finally, heels slapping in her sandals, she strides towards them and then keeps going. They follow, catching her word-trail, "Stupid people. Stupid, stupid', stupid. I HATE stupid people." It's the little skips between steps the younger one takes to keep up with her mother's long, angry legs. It's the car door slamming and the seat belt buckle yanked into place. It's those things that tell the daughters how the next few hours will go.
In the car, the older one sighs and grinds her back teeth. The younger one feels her face get hotter and her eyes start to swell. She stares at an ice cream stain on the back of the front .4eat and sees a pony, a flower, and a fairy in that splash of chocolate mint chip. The mother begins on both at once. "And when we get home, if your shoes are still in the TV room, I'm throwing them out. Same for books. No more shit house. No more lazy, ungrateful kids. "And so on and so on through the black velvet sky and across the Hershey bar roads. On into the house with a slap or two. "You'll be happy when I'm in my grave," wails at them as they put on their nightgowns and brush their teeth. The older one sets a stone jaw and the younger one tries not to sob an she opens wide, engulfing her small hand and. scrubbing each and every molar.
The father is not spared. The volcanic mother saves some up just for him. "Fucking lousy husband Do-nothing father." And on like that for an hour or so more. Then in the darkest part of the night, it's bare feet and cool hands on a small sweaty forehead. Kisses and caresses and "Sorry Mom got a little mad." Promises for that pink ruffled bedspread or maybe a new stuffed animal. Long fingers rake through the younger one's curls. "Tomorrow evening, we'll get you some kind of treat, Right after dinner, we'll go to the mall."
From the first paragraph, we get the impression that ______.
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