No country embraced the IQ—and the application of IQ testing to restructure society—mote thoroughly than the U.S. Every year millions of Americans have their IQ measured, many with a direct descendant of Binet’s original test, the Stanford-Binet, although not necessarily for the purpose Binet intended. He developed his test as a way of identifying public school students who needed extra help in learning; and that is still one of its leading uses.
But the broader and more controversial use of IQ testing has its roots in a theory of intelligence—part science, part sociology—that developed in the late 19th century, before Binte's work and entirely separate from it, Championed first by Charles Darwin' s cousin Francis Galton, it held that intelligence was the most valuable human attribute, and that if people who had a lot of it could be identified and put in leadership positions, all of Society would benefit.
Terman believed IQ tests should be used to conduct a great s6rting out of the population, so that young people would be assigned on the basis of their scores to particular levels in the school system, which would lead to corresponding socioeconomic destinations in adult life. The beginning of the IQ-testing movement overlapped with the eugenics movement—hugely popular in America and Europe among the "better sort" before Hitler gave it a bad name—which held that intelligence was mostly inherited and that people-deficient in it should be discouraged from reproducing. The state sterilization that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes notoriously endorsed in a 1927.Supreme Court decision was done with an IQ score as justification.
The American IQ promoters scored a great coup during World War I when they persuaded the Army to give IQ tests to 1.7 million inductees. It was the world's first mass administration of an intelligence test, and many of the standardized tests in use today can be traced back to it: the now ubiquitous and obsessed-over SAT(Stud), Ability Test); the Wechsler, taken by several million people a year, according to its publisher; and Terman's own National Intelligence Test, originally used in tracking elementary school children. All these tests took from the Army the basic technique of measuring intelligence mainly by asking vocabulary questions (synonyms, antonyms, analogies, reading comprehension).
According to Termon's theory, a twelve-year-old boy's mental age is 10, then his IQ number is about______.
A. 0.8
B. 0.9
C. 1.0
D. 1,2
Clarke, although he is seen as a visionary, has got it wrong before. There's no sign of Hal the dominating computer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (written by Arthur C Clarke) appearing on the horizon next year to dominate human life. Even so, computers have changed the way that we work and play. The Internet is changing business, seemingly sweeping everything along on an e-tide. The Web will change the way we work — more of us will work from home.
Futurist Ian Pearson sees a convergence between intelligent computers and biotechnology, the advent of implanted chips and enhanced intelligence. Both machines and humans will have access to a global net with instant access to the world' s knowledge. But Pearson also fears that it could divide the world into two classes — those with access to this knowledge and those without access. And obviously there is a risk in losing control of things that think. Pearson expects machines to be as smart as humans by 2015. After that, computers will continue to get smarter.
The trouble with the digital revolution, says MIT Media Lab director Neil Gershenfeld in his book When Things Start to Think, is that computers may have speeded up many of the processes 0f modem life, but they still remain relatively difficult to use. "Most computers are nearly blind, deaf and dumb," says Gershenfeld. "These inert machines channel the richness of human communication through a keyboard and mouse. The speed of the computer is increasingly much less of a concern than the difficulty in telling it what you want it to do, or in understanding what it has done, or in using it where you want to go, rather than where it can go."
What's needed now, he concludes, is digital evolution. The real challenge is how to create systems with many components that can work together and change, merging the physical world with the digital world.
"If we can manage the development so that they (thinking machines) stay our friends, in just a few years we'll see progress in every area of life that makes the preceding millennia look like we've all been asleep."
Evolution is a consequence of interaction, says Gershenfeld. "And information technology is profoundly changing how we interact. Therefore it's not crazy to think about the impact of this on evolution."
From paragraph 4, we can deduce that______.
A. the speed of computers is faster than ever
B. scientists encounter unprecedented difficulties
C. the intelligence of computers is more important than the speed
D. there is much room for the improvement of computer intelligence
So far, inflation is roaring in only a few sectors of the economy. While platinum has soared 121 percent, soybeans have risen 115 percent, and an index of Real Estate Investment Trusts has climbed 42 percent since May 2001, the consumer price index (CPI) has gone up only 4.2 percent during the same period. The challenge is figuring out what happens next.
Astute investors are asking two questions: 1) Will the dollar continue to decline? 2) Which assets will continue to inflate?
The value of the dollar matters because much of what Americans buy comes from abroad. And in the past two years, the dollar has been slipping badly: down some 25 percent against a basket of foreign currencies, including the euro and the yen. That makes imported goods more expensive. If the dollar falls further, the rise in prices could boost inflation.
And that's exactly what some analysts predict. "This is not a run-of-the-mill problem where the currency corrects 25 percent" then stabilizes, says David Tice, Dallas-based manager of the Prudent Global Income Fund. "We have an economy that's very dependent upon ever-increasing amounts of debt. Look at borrowing in this country for automobiles and housing. At the federal level, we are creating credit as if it is going out of style. Given that, we think the dollar can decline substantially more from here."
That's why Mr. Tice's income fund has invested in government bonds in countries that are major trading partners of the US. These bonds tend to increase in value as the dollar weakens.
There are other ways for investors to protect themselves from inflation. For example: TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities) are US government bonds that increase both principal and interest payments in line with the CPI/U, which measures prices for urban dwellers. Thus, if the price of consumer goods goes up, TIPS owners get a boost in their rate of return. That's a level of inflation protection that most bonds and money-market funds don't provide.
Still, there are no guarantees. If real interest rates rise faster than inflation, TIPS can lose value if they're not held to maturity. "TIPS have generally been less volatile than traditional bonds," but investors have already seen periods when their inflation-protection doesn't match the actual rise in prices, warns Duane Cabrera, head of the personal financial planning group at Vanguard, based in Valley Forge, Pa. For example, the year-over-year change in the CPI/U is running about 1.9 percent, be points out, but college costs have been rising about 5 percent annually.
Investors should also discuss the tax consequences with their investment advisers, Mr. Cabrera notes.
On the stock front, investors can also turn to natural-resource stocks or mutual funds that invest in them. A slightly more exotic option: exchange-traded funds, which act like mutual funds but trade like stocks.
Commodities offer another avenue for profit during inflationary times. Individual investors probably want to avoid commodity trading, often a wild and woolly experience. But certain mutual funds offer share holders a chance to profit when commodity prices go up. The PIMCO Commodity Real Return Fund, for example, provides exposure to the performance of the Dow-Jones AIG Commodity Index while generating income from TIPS. Another option: the Oppenheimer Real Asset Fund, which is actively managed and tracks the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.
There's no clear winner between these stock funds and the commodities their companies have invested in. When commodity prices are falling, natural-resource firms can protect themselves by hedging their risks, says Kevin Baum, portfolio manager of the Oppenheimer Real Asset Fund. On the other band, hedging may keep them from benefiting when commodity prices rise. And the stocks can be more volatile than the commodities themselves. Gold funds typically are three times more vo
A. the US economy is very dependent upon ever-increasing amounts of debt
B. the amount of borrowing today in the US for automobiles and housing is getting bigger and bigger
C. one of the main reasons for the depreciation of dollar is the ever increasing amounts of US domestic debts
D. the US federal government is creating credit because the people have already showed unwillingness to be indebted
听力原文: Norway has agreed to become the first country outside Africa to try a Rwandan genocide suspect. The United Nations tribunal in Tanzanian town of Arusha is to transfer a senior former Rwandan government official to Norway where his case will be heard. He is Michel Bagaragaza, who was head of the Rwandan tea industry and is accused of organizing his workforce into a militia to attack the Tutsi minority. The chief prosecutor of the Arusha Tribunal Arusha Hassan Jallow told the BBC that Norway was only the first of four European countries to agree to hear some Rwanda's genocide trials. But he declined to name the other three. Mr. Jallow said they were selected for their standard of justice because they did not impose the death penalty, which the tribunal does not allow. This stand has angered Rwanda which has repeatedly demanded that the accused be transferred to its jurisdiction. But since Rwanda will not repeal the death penalty, this has not been acceptable.
Rwanda is not allowed to hear the trial because
A. Norway is well known for its fair jurisdiction.
B. the UN tribunal is in favor of European countries.
C. the death penalty still exists in the country.
D. Michel Bagaragaza is a genocide suspect.