【正文】 ed not least among them. In an odd way, However, it is the educated who have claimed to have give up on have give up on ambition as an ideal. What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambitionif not always their own the that of their parents and grandparents. There is heavy note of hypocrisy in this, a case of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped with the educated themselves riding on them. Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its signs now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs. The locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago. What has happened is that people cannot confess fully to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive and vulgar. Instead, we are treated to fine hypocritical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home。s eyes, the postwar Japan was_____ . ［ A］ under aimless development ［ B］ a positive example ［ C］ a rival to the West ［ D］ on the decline to the author, what may chiefly be responsible for the moral decline of Japanese society? ［ A］ Women39。s education mittee. Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild. Last year Japan experienced2,125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assaults on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World WarⅡ had weakened the Japanese morality of respect for parents. But that may have more to do with Japanese lifestvles. In Japan, says educator Yoko Muro, it39。 we must use many sizes of type and different colored inks on the same page, and shorten or lengthen words at will. Certainly their descriptions of battles are confused. But it is a little upsetting to read in the explanatory notes that a certain line describes a fight between a Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge off which they both fall into the river and then to find that the line consists of the noise of their falling and the weights of the officers:` Pluff! Pluff! A hundred and eightyfive kilograms.39。s Kennedy School of Government, It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity, says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a thinktank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as a golden age of business management in the United States. its predominance after World War Ⅱ because_____ . ［ A］ it had made painstaking efforts towards this goal ［ B］ its domestic market was eight times larger than before ［ C］ the war had destroyed the economies of most potential petitors ［ D］ the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy loss of . predominance in the world economy in the 1980s is manifested in the fact that the American_____ . ［ A］ TV industry had withdrawn to its domestic market ［ B］ semiconductor industry had been taken over by foreign enterprises ［ C］ machinetool industry had collapsed after suicidal actions ［ D］ auto industry had lost part of its domestic market can be inferred from the passage? ［ A］ It is human nature to shift between selfdoubt and blind pried. ［ B］ Intense petition may contribute to economic progress. ［ C］ The revival of the economy depends on international cooperation. ［ D］ A long history of success may pave the way for further development. author seems to believe the revival of the . economy in the 1990s can be attributed to the____ . ［ A］ turning of the business cycle ［ B］ restructuring of industry ［ C］ improved business management ［ D］ success in education Passage 2 Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70yearolds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, by babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when the are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby(particularly a boy baby)surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes one more agent of evolution has gone. There is another way to mit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious munities, very few women has 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has bee average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in uppermiddleclass India pared to the tribes. For us, this means that evolution is over。s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and