Shelly hugged her husband."Be careful, Billy."
"Come on, Shell!" Bill rolled his eyes. "You worry too much, Honey. Me and the boys will be OK. It's just a three — day trip. We'll catch enough halibut to be able to fix up the baby's room the way you want it." '
"Billy, I love you and worry every time you go to sea, especially in winter."
"Shell, I promise I'll be careful. I may be the youngest captain in this port, but I'm the most careful. I learned at the helm of Daddy's boat, which I was practically raised on."
They hugged again. Bill planted a tender kiss on her cheek, rested his open palm on her slightly swollen stomach, "Besides, I need to be here. Little Billy will need his daddy." Shelly slapped him on the shoulder. "It's Billy Jean and you know it.”
Bill laughed, "Not on my watch, Girl. I gave you a boy to take over as captain."
Their laughter broke the tension. "I have to go, Shell. See you in a few days?" He turned to leave and then turned back, reached into the pocket of his heavy coat and pulled out an envelope."I almost forgot. Here's my letter?"
Shelly took the crisp envelope and slipped into the pocket of her dress. "Thanks，Billy.” It had been their custom since they started dating. Billy gave her a note before he went to sea. She wasn't allowed to open it until the next day. He usually wrote of love or sometimes something silly - both made her smile. She wrote a reply and left it on the kitchen table for him. Reading her reply was the first thing he did when he came home.
She watched as her husband walked the'length of the pier to where the forty-five foot “Shelly Girl” and his crew waited. He gave a final wave and climbed aboard.
Shelly stood by their pickup truck and watched until the boat rounded the point and disappeared from view. "I love you, Billy.” she whispered. "Be safe." ①
That evening, five hundred miles to the south, a small winter depression moved north along the Atlantic coast of the USA. Experts found an unexpected change in the jet stream, which would make the small depression become a raging winter storm. ②
Shelly woke in the morning and listened to the weather report on the battered radio sitting on kitchen table. The phone rang."Hello."
“Shelly?"
"Hi, Gail!" She recognized the voice of her friend, who was the wife of one of Billy's crew. “Have you heard the weather?"
"Hang on a second. I just turned the radio on." Shelly's face paled as she heard the weather person say a major winter depression had moved into the area. "Oh crap!"
"That's what [ said too.”
"They'll be OK, Gail. They're experienced fishermen." Shelly said to Gail It was a attempt to convince herself that her man would be safe. ③
Off the south shore of Nova Scotia, Bill struggled to control the Shelly Girl in the growing waves. Wind and water attacked Bill and his crew from all directions. The forty- and fifty-foot walls of water were too much of a challenge for the young captain.
The force of the water flipped the boat over, tore the wheelhouse off and tossed Bill and his crew into the icy Atlantic.
The water, only a few degrees above the freezing point, soon overcame Bill's will to live. “Shelly!
He took a last painful breath of salt water and slipped below the surface. ④
The crisp envelope bent beneath her fingers as she laid it on her lap and read. "Shelly, you are my life,, my love and soon-to-be mother of our son一girl if that is what you really want. I'll always come home."
Shelly reached for the pen in her dress pocket. Tears dripped from her face and stained the paper she wrote on, “________."
Her note sits on their kitchen table still — never read.
1.Why was Shelly worried too much when Billy go to sea this time?
A.Because she and their baby Billy Jean needed Billy's protection and care.
B.Because she knew from the radio that a major winter depression would come.
C.Because she had a feeling that Billy would never return home.
D.Because she cared about Billy's safety in the sea, especially in winter.
2.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Billy could read Shelly's reply letter only when he returned home from the sea.
B.Billy and Shelly wrote letters to each other since they got married.
C.Shelly read Billy's letter eagerly each time she got his letter.
D.They exchanged their letters with each other every time Billy went out.
3.Which word can be filled in the blank in the passage?
A.weak B.strong C.hard D.desperate
4.Where can the sentences "Shell sat in her favorite spot on the porch of their weathered beach house, the salty air sticking to her heavy winter clothes. The oncoming storm blew sand across her winter boots.," be put in?
A.① B.② C.③ D.④
5.Which of the following may be Shelly's reply to Billy's letter?
A.Billy, you were so brave, I always knew.
B.Billy, I always knew the ocean was your home.
C.Billy, I always knew, you would come back.
D.Billy, I love you, I would always wait for you.
6.Which of the following can be the best title of this passage?
A.An unlucky Billy B.A storm in life
C.A broken Shelly D.Never read
“Without trust,” writes Rachel Botsman, “society cannot survive, and it certainly cannot thrive."
Clearly, we are in trouble. Two-thirds of people surveyed last year in 28 countries expressed low levels of trust in "mainstream institutions" of business, government and media.
In “Who Can You Trust?” Botsman, an Oxford lecturer offers a timely and accessible framework for understanding what trust is, how it works, why it matters and how it is evolving. It is an important guidance to the obstacles and opportunities we face as a society if we are to repair and redefine trust.
Through human history, trust has evolved in three basic stages: Local trust was enough when people lived in small communities and everybody knew everybody else; industrialization and urbanization required institutional trust so that people could trust complete strangers running governments, corporations, and standards for international trade, commerce and finance. We are now living through a massive global .shift of trust from institutions to individuals: distributed trust facilitated by high-tech platforms, many of which are run by the private sector.
This shift is caused by several factors. First, accountability is unequal. Rich, powerful and well-connected individuals have been able to accumulate vast quantities of often undocumented wealth by avoiding tax and anti-bribery laws, while ordinary people are likely to be caught and punished for lawbreaking. Second, people in power are no longer seen to deserve greater respect as the details of their lives are exposed.
Botsman does not prescribe how we deal with that. But if the old ways of giving and cancelling trust such as voting, markets and consumer choice are no longer functioning, then we must change or replace them. Systems must be "driven democratically and rationally," become more "transparent, inclusive, and accountable" and, most important, be designed to "put people first," which profit-driven platforms have failed to do sufficiently.
Tech executives are responding to the trust crisis mainly with promises of more and better technology. But Batsman warns that the responsibility for ensuring that the robots being used are trustworthy lies with the human beings who design and use them. We have not thought through how we hold those people accountable, let alone their robots. She warns against a natural tendency "to become over-reliant on machines." Ideally machines should be programmed to "understand" their own limitations and even seek human help or intervention.
A growing number of people hope that new trust mechanisms can be established through the use of exciting new technologies such as the blockchain（区块链）. In essence, blockchains are digital public ledgers of transactions that cannot be changed, thereby creating greater transparency and accountability and making corruption much harder.
However, Botsman warns that the blockchain is no panacea for human trust. Whether blockchain systems lead to more accountable governance and a more just global economy will depend on their design and the intentions of those who build them. There is no app for fixing trust.
"Who Can You Trust?" does make a clear case for why it is important for the companies, governments and other institutions to be much more transparent and subject themselves to new mechanisms that can credibly hold them accountable. It is the only way they can hope to earn and maintain trust in the future.
1.Which of the following orders of trust evolution is right?
A.institutional trust→ industrialized trust→ individual trust
B.urbanized trust→ local trust→ institutional trust
C.local trust→ institutional trust→ distributed trust
D.local trust→ urbanized trust →individual trust
2.What can we conclude from the passage?
A.Profit-driven platforms pay no attention to the importance of people.
B.It is the people who design and use technology that count in restoring trust.
C.New technologies, such as the blockchain can prevent corruption from happening.
D.People should rely on new technologies to create transparency and accountability.
3.What do the underlined words “no panacea" mean?
A.not a Herculean task B.a hard nut
C.not a cure-all medicine D.a catch -22
4.What's the author's attitude toward the possibility of using technology to restore trust?
A.Supportive B.Negative
C.Indifferent D.Skeptical
You are about to hear a strange but true story. Legend has it that, Harry Houdini, the master magician, once claimed that he could break out of any jail cell in the world. All he had to do was walk into that jail cell with his street clothes on. 'I will be out of there in one hour. No problem!' He said. A very old jail down South heard about Houdini's claims and they accepted the challenge. On the day of the event, many people gathered outside. Very confidently, Houdini walked into the jail and into the cell and they shut the metal door behind him.
The first thing Houdini did was to take off his coat. Then, very strangely, he took off his belt. Secretly hidden in Houdini's belt, was a ten-inch piece of steel; very tough and very flexible and Houdini started working.
In about 30 minutes, that confident expression Houdini had when he walked in disappeared. In one hour, he was bathed in sweat. And at the end of two hours, Houdini in defeat, collapsed against the door, which then opened. It opened because you see, that door had never been locked. But that's not entirely true is it? That door was locked. It was firmly and thoroughly locked in Houdini's mind, which meant it was locked as if the best locksmith in the world had put his lock on it.
The mind is powerful. How many doors in your life do you think are locked but aren't? how many times have you been stuck in the mental prison of over thinking something that really had a simple solution. There is an ancient African proverb that says when there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm.
Your mind is the most powerful force you will ever face. It will tell you lies. It will tell you can't do that. You're not meant for that. You're not good enough for that. You can't go on anymore. You don't have the energy. You must thank it for its opinion and carry on. Because as Houdini showed us the only locked doors that exist are in your own mind. The doors in reality are open and all you have to do is walk through.
1.Why couldn't Harry Houdini open the door within two hours?
A.Because he didn't open the door with his mind.
B.Because the door was locked by the best locksmith.
C.Because he had thought the door was locked.
D.Because he overestimated his own ability to open the door.
2.Which of the following story shows the "locked door," in our mind?
A.Bring the painted dragon to life by putting in the pupils of its eyes.
B.One tends to stand still and refuse to make progress.
C.The donkey has exhausted its skills against the tiger.
D.Lock the stable door after the horse has been stolen.
3.We can conclude from the passage EXCEPT ?
A.The biggest enemy in your life is in fact the enemy in your mind.
B.If you walk through the door in mind, your potential will be unlimited.
C.Unless you defeat the enemy outside, you will not defeat your enemy inside.
D.Life is really simple, but we insist on making it rigid and complicated.
Below are four books of the 10 Best Books of 2019. Which one will you add to your booklist?
Exhalation （呼吸）
By Ted Chiang
■ Many of the nine deeply beautiful stories in this collection explore the material consequences of time travel. Reading them feels, like sitting at dinner with a friend who explains scientific theory to you without an ounce of condescension （傲慢）.Each thoughtful, elegantly crafted story poses a philosophical question; Chiang organizes all nine into a conversation that comes full circle, after having travelled remarkab1e val1eys ，，, deserts and plains.
Lost Children Archivef(档案）)）
By Valeria Luiselli
■ The Mexican author’s third novel — her first to be written in English — unfolds against a backdrop of crisis: of children crossing borders, facing death, being confined, being deported unaccompanied by their guardians.
The novel centers on a couple and their two children, who are taking a road trip from New York City to the Mexican border; the couple's marriage is on the edge of collapse and the woman tries to help a Mexican immigrant find her daughters, who've gone missing in their attempt to cross the border behind her. The brilliance of Luiselli's writing stirs anger and pity. Acutely sensitive, Luiselli has delivered an experimental book, one that is as much about storytellers and storytelling as it is about lost children.
The Yellow House
By Sarah Broom
■ In her first extraordinary, fascinating appearance, Broom pushes past the baseline expectations of memoir to create an entertaining and inventive combination of literary forms. Part oral history, part urban history, part celebration of a bygone way of life, "The Yellow House" is a full accusation of the greed, discrimination, indifference and poor city planning that led her family's home to be wiped off the map. Tracing the history of a single home in New Orleans East, from the ' 60s to Hurricane Katrina, this is an instantly essential text, examining the past, present and possible future of the city of New Orleans, and a true reflection of America.
No Visible Bruises
By Rachel Louise Snyder
■ Snyder's thoroughly reported book covers what the World Health Organization has called "a global health problem of epidemic proportions." In America alone, more
than half of all murdered women are killed by a current or former partner; domestic violence cuts across lines of class, religion and race. Snyder exposes myths (restraining orders are the answer,: abusers never change) and writes movingly about the lives of people on both sides of the equation. She doesn't give easy answers but presents a wealth of information that is its own form of hope.
1.If you are a fan of science fiction, which book will you choose?
A.Exhalation Lost B.Children Archive
C.The Yellow House D.No Visible Bruises
2.According to the passage, which of the following sentences is TRUE?
A.In the book Exhalation, Ted Chiang describes a story told by his friend.
B.Lost Children Archive is Valeria Luiselli's first novel in English.
C.Several stories of literary forms make up the book, The Yellow House.
D.No Visible Bruises shows nothing but restraining orders are answers to family violence.
For years, I thought a present and a gift as the same thing.
I grew up in a household where presents marked special _______ There was always a box
for each of us under the tree at Christmas. ____ Dad always gave Mom something each Valentines Day and anniversary. He would carefully plan his shopping trips to find just the _____thing. His joy in the hunt was proof of the _____ of giving and of his love for her. I saw these presents as the ______ of a husband's devotion.
So when I married a man who did not give presents on a regular basis, it was a(an)____.
I wrestled with my _____ . Gary did not___ avoid gift-giving. Gary would return from sea __ with a brown paper bag inside of which was something that reminded him of me.
I tried to change him______.I prepared gifts for Christmas and for his birthdays _______ .
He appreciated the caring, but refused to do the same thing for me.
I dropped hints, they fell on_______ ears.
I began to tell him what I wanted, giving______ instructions. When Gary left for the market one Saturday, I asked him to find me diamond earrings as a birthday present. Yet he came home with a road scraper （刮路机）.
______when the snowstorm Mt later that year and he was at sea, I used the road scraper to plow （犁）out both our driveway and our neighbor's, thinking how______ earrings would have been was then that I realized he had been giving me gifts ail along. The gestures, large and small, born of his caring and concern were the _______that he gave daily.
We ___to teach others how to love us. In that struggle, we often forget how to _______the love they already give us as only they can give it.
I finally began to understand the_______ between a present and a gift. A present is a thing. But a gift is a small act of kindness, the willingness to_______to another's needs, the sacrifice of time and effort.
1.A.locations B.situations C.occasions D.conditions
2.A.Additionally B.Originally C.Fortunately D.Consequently
3.A.cheap B.astonishing C.splendid D.right
4.A.pleasure B.ambition C.intention D.addiction
5.A.example B.emphasis C.reminder D.expression
6.A.improvement B.adjustment C.despair D.disaster :
7.A.expectations B.dilemma C.conscience 、 D.anxiety
8.A.actively B.willingly C.intentionally D.wholly
9.A.supplied B.armed C.decorated D.filled
10.A.by tradition B.by force C.by example D.by accident
11.A.on purpose B.in order C.at random D.on time
12.A.sharp B.big C.deaf D.sensitive
13.A.some B.specific C.brief D.unusual
14.A.And B.So C.Though D.But
15.A.precious B.practical C.useless D.ugly
16.A.promises B.gifts C.blessings D.instructions
17.A.struggle B.fail C.attempt D.decide
18.A.express B.appreciate C.return D.share
19.A.distance B.similarity C.difference D.conflict
20.A.subscribe B.take C.connect D.bend
The actor lately released a new film, which has met with a mixed _____ from his fans.
A.assumption B.reception C.composition D.description
