题目内容
Jeremy Fox, a retired businessman in a small city in England, recently bought an old farmhouse with a yard and a small field, some five miles out of the town. There he planned to lead a simple life with his wife, Amelia.
It was while clearing out the old ham on the far side of the yard that he made an interesting discovery. In a corner, under some old sacks, he found some large fragments (碎片) of an antique bowl. Out of curiosity, he took them into the kitchen and, much to the anger of his wife, washed the mud off them. That evening he spread newspapers over the kitchen table and carefully stuck the fragments together. However, two pieces were found missing.
Two days later, having pulled down the ham, Mr. Fox was digging over the ground in preparation for the installation of a greenhouse, when he discovered the two missing pieces. When he had stuck them in position, the bowl looked so fine that Amelia agreed to its being placed on a table in the living room, in front of the window.
"We might have something a bit special here," he said to his wife. A few days later, Jeremy took several photographs of the bowl, which he sent off to Sotheby's in London.
Unexpectedly, Sotheby's was extremely interested in the bowl and sent an expert to inspect it. It. turned out that it was a Chinese Ming fish bowl, dating back to around 1590, and might be expected to get a five-figure sum at an auction (拍卖).
A week later, still more unexpectedly, two police officers called and told the Foxes the bowl was stolen property.
So the bowl never reached the auction room, and Mr. Fox never received the five figure sum that had been mentioned. However, he framed one of the photographs he had taken and hung it on the wall.
At first Mrs. Fox seemed to be______.
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听力原文：W: Why are you just standing outside instead of going in？
M: I have tried all my keys in the lock, but it won't open.
Q: Why didn't the man go in？
(15)
The World in a Glass: Six Drinks That Changed History
Tom Standage urges drinkers to savor the history of their favorite beverages along with the taste.
The author of A History of the World in 6 Glasses (Walker & Company, June 2005), Standage lauds the libations that have helped shape our world from the Stone Age to the present day.
"The important drinks are still drinks that we enjoy today," said Standage, a technology editor at the London-based magazine the Economist. "They arc relics(纪念物) of different historical periods still found in our kitchens."
Take the six-pack, whose contents first fizzed at the dawn of civilization.
Beer
The ancient Sumerians, who built advanced city-states in the area of present-day Iraq, began fermenting(发酵) beer from barley at least 6,000 years ago.
"When people started agriculture the first crops they produced were barley or wheat. You consume those crops as bread and as beer," Standage noted. "It's the drink associated with the dawn of civilization. It's as simple as that."
Beer was popular with the masses from the beginning.
"Beer would have been something that a common person could have had in the house and made whenever they wanted," said Linda Bisson, a microbiologist at the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis.
"The guys who built the pyramids were paid in beer and bread," Standage added. "It was the defining drink of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Everybody drank it. Today it's the drink of the working man, and it was then as well."
Wine
Wine may be as old or older than beer---though no one can be certain.
Paleolithic humans probably sampled the first "wine" as the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes. But producing and storing wine proved difficult for early cultures:
"To make wine you have to have fresh gropes," said Bisson, the UC Davis microbiologist. "For beer you can just store grain and add water to process it at any time."
Making wine also demanded pottery that could preserve the precious liquid.
"Wine may be easier to make [than beer], but it's harder to store," Bisson added. "For most ancient cultures it would have been hard to catch [fermenting grape juice] as wine on its way to [becoming] vinegar."
Such caveats and the expense of producing wine helped the beverage quickly gain more cachet (威望) than beer. Wine was originally associated with social elites and religious activities.
Wine snobbery may be nearly as old as wine itself. Greeks and Romans produced many grades of wine for various social classes.
The quest for quality became an economic engine and later drove cultural expansion.
"Once you had regions [like Greece and Rome] that could distinguish themselves as making good stuff, it gave them an economic boost," Bisson said. "Beer just wasn't as special."
Spirits
Hard liquor, particularly brandy and rum, placated (安抚) sailors during the long sea voyages of the Age of Exploration, when European powers plied the seas during the 15th, 16th, and early 17th centuries.
Rum played a crucial part of the triangular trade between Britain, Africa, and the North American colonies that once dominated the Atlantic economy.
Standage also suggests that rum may have been more responsible than tea for the independence movement in Britain's American colonies.
"Distilling molasses for rum was very important to the New England economy," he explained. "When the British tried to tax molasses it struck at the heart of the economy. The idea of 'no taxation without representation' originated with molasses and sugar. Only at the end did it refer to tea."
Great Britain's longtime superiority at sea may also owe a
A．Nothing.B．A lot.C．Hardly anything.D．A little.
听力原文： We know that we have to pay for what we get. If we buy food, we know there will be a bill to pay. These are private bills. But there are also public bills that must be paid. Public bills are paid by the government. In turn we get these services through taxes. What would happen if everyone in the city stopped paying taxes？ The water supply would stop; water might become unclean and impure. The streets might notbe cleaned. There would be no police force to protect .people and property. Schools would be closed. People would become sick and diseases might spread. We should not want to live in such a city. We all want pure water and food, clean streets and good schools. We want the police to prevent crime. The chief duty for every government is to protect persons and property. More than three quarters of the money spent by our government is used for this purpose. The next largest amount of public money goes to teach and train our citizens. Billions of dollars each year are spent on schools and libraries. Public money is used to pay the teachers and all the public officials. A large number of public funds are also spent on roads.
The greatest part of necessary funds is raised by taxes. A tax is money that we all must pay to support the government. The law orders us to pay taxes. We have no choice in the matter. Almost everyone pays some taxes in one form. or another.
(36)
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