考研英语真题阅读理解.docx

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1、2011 Text 1The decision of the New York Philharmonic to hire Alan Gilbert as its next music director has been the talk of the classical-music world ever since the sudden announcement of his appointment in 2009. For the most part, the response has been favorable, to say the least.Hooray! At last!” wr

2、ote Anthony Tommasini, a sober-sided classical-music critic.One of the reasons why the appointment came as such a surprise, however, is that Gilbert is comparatively little known. Even Tommasini, who had advocated Gilberts appointment in the Tim es, calls him an unpretentious musician with no air of

3、 the formidable conductor about him/* As a description of the next music director of an orchestra that has hitherto been led by musicians like Gustav Mahler and Pierre Boulez, that seems likely to have struck at least some Times readers as faint praise.For my part, I have no idea whether Gilbert is

4、a great conductor or even a good one. To be sure, he performs an impressive variety of interesting compositions, but it is not necessary for me to visit Avery Fisher Hall, or anywhere else, to hear interesting orchestral music. All I have to do is to go to my CD shelf, or boot up my computer and dow

5、nload still more recorded music from iTunes.Devoted concertgoers who reply that recordings are no substitute for live performance are missing the point. For the time, attention, and money of the art-loving public, classical instrumentalists must compete not only with opera houses, dance troupes, the

6、ater companies, and museums, but also with the recorded performances of the great classical musicians of the 20th century. There recordings are cheap, available everywhere, and very often much higher in artistic quality than todays live performances; moreover, they can be consumed“ at a time and pla

7、ce of the listeners choosing. The widespread availability of such recordings has thus brought about a crisis in the institution of the traditional classical concert.One possible response is for classical performers to program attractive new music that is not yet available on record. Gilberts own int

8、erest in new music has been widely noted: Alex Ross, a classical-music critic, has described him as a man who is capable of turning the Philharmonic into a markedly different, more vibrant organization. But what will be the nature of that difference? Merely expanding the orchestras repertoire will n

9、ot be enough. If Gilbert and the Philharmonic are to succeed, they must first change the relationship between Americas oldest orchestra and the new audience it hops to attractText 2When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up. Rathe

10、r than cloaking his exit in the usual vague excuses, he came right out and said he was leaving to pursue my goal of running a company.r, Broadcasting his ambition was very much my decision,McGee says. Within two weeks, he was talking for the first time with the board of Hartford Financial Services G

11、roup, which named him CEO and chairman on September 29.McGee says leaving without a position lined up gave him time to reflect on what kind of company he wanted to run. It also sent a clear message to the outside world about his aspirations. And McGee isnt alone. In recent weeks the No.2 executives

12、at Avon and American Express quit with the explanation that they were looking for a CEO post. As boards scrutinize succession plans in response to shareholder pressure, executives who dont get the nod also may wish to move on. A turbulent business environment also has senior managers cautious of let

13、ting vague pronouncements cloud their reputations.As the first signs of recovery begin to take hold, deputy chiefs may be more willing to make the jump without a net. In the third quarter, CEO turnover was down 23% from a year ago as nervous boards stuck with the leaders they had, according to Liber

14、um Research. As the economy picks up, opportunities will abound for aspiring leaders.The decision to quit a senior position to look for a better one is unconventional. For years executives and headhunters have adhered to the rule that the most attractive CEO candidates are the ones who must be poach

15、ed. Says Korn/Ferry senior partner Dennis Carey:r/I cant think of a single search Ive done where a board has not instructed me to look at sitting CEOs first/rThose who jumped without a job havent always landed in top positions quickly. Ellen Marram quit as chief of Tropicana a decade age, saying she

16、 wanted to be a CEO. It was a year before she became head of a tiny Internet-based commodities exchange. Robert Willumstad left Citigroup in 2005 with ambitions to be a CEO. He finally took that post at a major financial institution three years later.Many recruiters say the old disgrace is fading fo

17、r top performers. The financial crisis has made it more acceptable to be between jobs or to leave a bad one.The traditional rule was its safer to stay where you are, but thats been fundamentally inverted/* says one headhunter.The people whorve been hurt the worst are those whove stayed too long.”Tex

18、t 3The rough guide to marketing success used to be that you got what you paid for. No longer. While traditional tpaid, media - such as television commercials and print advertisements - still play a major role, companies today can exploit many alternative forms of media. Consumers passionate about a

19、product may create owned“ media by sending e-mail alerts about products and sales to customers registered with its Web site. The way consumers now approach the broad range of factors beyond conventional paid media.Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers promoting their own products. For ear

20、ned media , such marketers act as the initiator for users responses. But in some cases, one marketers owned media become another marketers paid media - for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that o

21、ther organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend ,which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created Baby

22、Center, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies, marketing, and ma

23、y help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more dam

24、aging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pre

25、ssure on the businesses that originally created them.If that happens, passionate consumers would try to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. In such a case, the companys response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve

26、 has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, alleviated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site

27、Digg.Text 4Its no surprise that Jennifer Seniors insightful, provocative magazine cover story,I love My Children, I Hate My Life,“ is arousing much chatter - nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. R

28、ather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experie

29、nce of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.”The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newssta

30、nds this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive - and newly single - mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual Jennifer Aniston is pregnant news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.In a society that so persistently celebrates

31、 procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesnt seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldnt have had

32、kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and P

33、eople present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock.According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid witho

34、ut a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their own(read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.Its hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that

35、 a baby is not a haircut. But its interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood arent in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped gettingthe R

36、achel“ might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.2010年Text 2Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. A received one for its one-click“ online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy

37、. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box.Now the nations top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U.S.

38、court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In Bilski, as the case is known , is a very big deal”, says DennisD. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It has the potential to eliminate an entire clas

39、s of patents.”Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face; because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with its 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an expl

40、osion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive pinhts to specific types of online transactions. Later, move established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might bent them

41、 to the punch. In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they too

42、k positions in court cases opposing the practice.The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. The Federal circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the courts judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and tha

43、t one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should“ reconsider“ its state street Bank ruling.The Federal Circuits action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the Supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signa

44、led that too many patents were being upheld for “inventions“ that are obvious. The judges on the Federal circuit are reacting to the anti-patient trend at the supreme court”, says Harole C.wegner, a patent attorney and professor at Jorge Washington University Law School.Text 3In his book The Tipping

45、 Point, Malcolm Aladuell argues that social epidemics are driven in large part by the acting of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesnt explain how ideas actually s

46、pread.The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible sounding but largely untested theory called the two step flow of communication,: Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests t

47、hat if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of people was wearing, promoting or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence

48、 of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they dont seem to be required of all

49、.The researchers argument stems from a simple observation about social influence, with the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey-whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence-even the most influential members of a population simply dont interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebring influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics by