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第二篇 A profound change seems to have taken place in the economic relationship between Americans and their animals. In 1993, the pet business was a $16 billion field dominated by mom and pop outfits and independent veterinarians. Today, it is a $ 23 billion empire. Nearly 60 percent of Americans live with one or more animals. More than 30 million have dogs, and 27 million have cats. While the overall number of owners has remained relatively stable since the 1980s, they are spending ever greater amounts on their animals. Signs of the boom are everywhere. On the retail side, superstore chains are covering the country. Americans consider cats and dogs a "part of the family" rather than property, which, legally, at least, they remain. (Being property themselves, for instance, animals cannot legally inherit property in wills, though growing numbers of them are being provided for in estates, and some law firms have developed a specialty in the area. ) The reasons for this metamorphosis from property to person are mysterious. No one seems to know exactly why Americans have changed their views. A decline in warmth among homo sapiens may explain part of the phenomenon, says attorney Lane Gabeler. She says it actually helps the practice by giving her people a softer edge. "People hate lawyers, and we look more human with a dog," Gabeler insists. On the other hand, there are more reasons now to own pets than there were a generation ago. Adults in their 20s and 30s marry and have kids later, leaving more room in their lives to adopt a beast. Medical research has determined that contact with pets can lower blood pressure and fend off heart attacks, so more and more of the elderly have embraced the animal kingdom. The pet industry is confident that the future remains bright. On the health insurance side alone, for example, the market has hardly been scratched. In the United Kingdom, 13 percent of the country’s 15 million owners have policies, and in Sweden, 57 percent of 7 million have been insured. But in the United States, with a total of 114 million pets, fewer than 1 percent of pets are covered if they choke on a chicken bone or try to bite the UPS truck driver. So if the bond between people and their creatures truly exists, and if that bond keeps deepening economically as well as emotionally, the next wave of American moguls may well be pet insurance agents rather than Internet pioneers. What does the author mean by "the market has hardly been scratched" (para. 6)
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Text 3 Most firms’ annual general meetings (AGMs) owe more to North Korea than ancient Greece. By long-standing tradition, bosses make platitudinous speeches, listen to lone dissidents with the air of psychiatric nurses towards patients and wait for their own proposals to be rubber-stamped by the proxy votes of obedient institutional investors. According to Manifest, a shareholder-advice firm, 97% of votes cast across Europe last year backed management. So should corporate democrats be cheered by the rebellion over pay at Royal Dutch Shell At the oil giant’s AGM on May 19th, 59% of voting shareholders sided against pay packages for top executives. In particular they disliked 4.2 million ($ 5.8 million) in shares dished out to five executives, which comprised about 12% of their total pay for 2008．Under the firm’s rules, such awards should be granted only if Shell’s total return in the year is in the top three of its peer group. In 2007 and 2008, Shell came a very close fourth, so the firm decided to pay out anyway. Shell is hardly a poster child for malfeasance: it is performing well, its pay is similar to that at other big oil firms and its shareholders previously gave directors discretion to bend the rules. They have used it to cut pay in the past. Still, although the vote is not binding, it is seriously embarrassing. The turnout was decent, at about 50%, and several big fund managers were clearly furious. The payouts have already been made and probably cannot be reversed, but Shell will be in disgrace for a while. Jorma Ollila, its chairman, said he took the vote "very seriously" and promised to "reflect carefully". After GSK, a British drugs firm, had a rebellion on pay in 2003, it completely redrew its pay policy. It is not just Shell that is facing unrest. Rough markets and a wider political uproar over pay have fuelled discontent across corporate Europe. Almost half of the voting shareholders at BP, another oil giant, failed to support its pay policies in April. At Rio Tinto, a mining firm with a habit of digging holes for itself, a fifth of voting shareholders rejected its remuneration policy. So far this year 15% of votes cast on pay in Britain have dissented, compared with 7% last year. In continental Europe owners are grumpy, too: in February almost a third of voting shareholders at Novartis, a Swiss drugs firm, demanded the right to approve its remuneration policy each year. But taking bosses to task for their ever-escalating salaries is not a substitute for keen oversight of performance and strategy. At Royal Bank of Scotland, which had to be rescued by taxpayers last year, 90% of voting shareholders rejected its pay policies last month. Yet back in August 2007, 95% of them ticked the box in support of the acquisition of ABN AMRO, the deal that brought the bank to its knees. What can we infer from "most firms’ annual general meetings (AGMs) owe more to North Korea than ancient Greece" in the first paragraph
Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank. Women often (1) that dating is like a cattle (2) , and a paper just published in Biology Letters by Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University, in England, suggests they are (3) . They have little cause for complaint, however, because the paper also suggests that in this particular market, it is (4) who are the buyers. Mr. Pollet and Dr. Nettle were looking for (5) to support the contention that women choose men of (6) status and resources, as well as good looks. That may sound common sense, but it was often (7) by social scientists until a group of researchers who called themselves evolutionary psychologists started investigating the matter two decades ago. Since then, a series of experiments in laboratories have supported the contention. But as all zoologists know, (8) can only tell you so much. Eventually, you have to look at (9) populations. And that is what Mr. Pollet and Dr. Nettle have done. They have examined data from the 19t0 census of the United States of America and discovered that marriage is, indeed, a market. Moreover, as in any market, a (10) of buyers means the sellers have to have particularly attractive goods on (11) if they are to make the exchange. The advantage of picking 1910 was that America had not yet settled down, demographically speaking. Though the long-colonized eastern states had a sex (12) of one man to one woman, or thereabouts, in the rest of the country the old adage "go west, young man" had resulted in a (13) of males. Mr. Pollet and Dr Nettle were thus able to see just how picky women are, (14) the chance. (15) looking at the whole census, the two researchers relied on a sample of one person in 250. They then (16) the men in the sample a socioeconomic status score between zero and 96, on a scale drawn up in 1950 (which was as close to 1910 as they could get). They showed that in states where the sexes were equal in number, 56% of low status men were married by the age of 30, (17) 60% of high status men were. Even in this case, then, there are women who would prefer to remain (18) rather than marry a deadbeat. When there were 110 men for every 100 women (as, for example, in Arizona), the women got really (19) . In that case only 24% of low-status men were married by 30 compared with 46% of high-status men. As the men went west, then, so did their (20) opportunities.
Directions: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank. Women often (1) that dating is like a cattle (2) , and a paper just published in Biology Letters by Thomas Pollet and Daniel Nettle of Newcastle University, in England, suggests they are (3) . They have little cause for complaint, however, because the paper also suggests that in this particular market, it is (4) who are the buyers. Mr. Pollet and Dr. Nettle were looking for (5) to support the contention that women choose men of (6) status and resources, as well as good looks. That may sound common sense, but it was often (7) by social scientists until a group of researchers who called themselves evolutionary psychologists started investigating the matter two decades ago. Since then, a series of experiments in laboratories have supported the contention. But as all zoologists know, (8) can only tell you so much. Eventually, you have to look at (9) populations. And that is what Mr. Pollet and Dr. Nettle have done. They have examined data from the 19t0 census of the United States of America and discovered that marriage is, indeed, a market. Moreover, as in any market, a (10) of buyers means the sellers have to have particularly attractive goods on (11) if they are to make the exchange. The advantage of picking 1910 was that America had not yet settled down, demographically speaking. Though the long-colonized eastern states had a sex (12) of one man to one woman, or thereabouts, in the rest of the country the old adage "go west, young man" had resulted in a (13) of males. Mr. Pollet and Dr Nettle were thus able to see just how picky women are, (14) the chance. (15) looking at the whole census, the two researchers relied on a sample of one person in 250. They then (16) the men in the sample a socioeconomic status score between zero and 96, on a scale drawn up in 1950 (which was as close to 1910 as they could get). They showed that in states where the sexes were equal in number, 56% of low status men were married by the age of 30, (17) 60% of high status men were. Even in this case, then, there are women who would prefer to remain (18) rather than marry a deadbeat. When there were 110 men for every 100 women (as, for example, in Arizona), the women got really (19) . In that case only 24% of low-status men were married by 30 compared with 46% of high-status men. As the men went west, then, so did their (20) opportunities.
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