2006年1月14日考研英語試題（完全版）

　　Text 3

　　When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals. They suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now something similar could be happening in the oceans.

　　That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.

　　Dr Worm acknowledges that the figures are conservative. One reason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today's vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.

　　Dr Myers and Dr Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline". The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.

　　31. The extinction of large prehistoric animals is noted to suggest that

　　A. large animal were vulnerable to the changing environment.

　　B. small species survived as large animals disappeared.

　　C. large sea animals may face the same threat today.

　　D. Slow-growing fish outlive fast-growing ones

　　32. We can infer from Dr Myers and Dr. Worm’s paper that

　　A. the stock of large predators in some old fisheries has reduced by 90%.

　　B. there are only half as many fisheries as there were 15 years ago.

　　C. the catch sizes in new fisheries are only 20% of the original amount.

　　D. the number of larger predators dropped faster in new fisheries than in the old.

　　33. By saying these figures are conservative (Line 1, paragraph 3), Dr Worm means that

　　A. fishing technology has improved rapidly

　　B. then catch-sizes are actually smaller then recorded

　　C. the marine biomass has suffered a greater loss

　　D. the data collected so far are out of date.

　　34. Dr Myers and other researchers hold that

　　A. people should look for a baseline that can’t work for a longer time.

　　B. fisheries should keep the yield below 50% of the biomass

　　C. the ocean biomass should restored its original level.

　　D. people should adjust the fishing baseline to changing situation

　　35. The author seems to be mainly concerned with most fisheries’

　　A.management efficiency

　　B.biomass level

　　C.catch-size limits

　　D.technological application.

　　Text 4

　　Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this: artists' only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.

　　This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring as we went from Wordsworth's daffodils to Baudelaire's flowers of evil.

　　You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it's not as if earlier times didn't know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.

　　After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.

　　People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.

　　Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda--to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

　　What we forget--what our economy depends on is forgetting--is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.

　　36.By citing the example of poets Wordsworth and Baudelaire, the author intends to show that

　　A. Poetry is not as expressive of joy as painting or music.

　　B. Art grow out of both positive and negative feeling.

　　C. Poets today are less skeptical of happiness.

　　D. Artist have changed their focus of interest.

　　37. The word “bummer” (Line 5. paragraph 5) most probably means something

　　A. religiousB. unpleasant C. entertaining D. commercial

　　38.In the author’s opinion, advertising

　　A.emerges in the wake of the anti-happy part.

　　B.is a cause of disappointment for the general peer

　　C.replace the church as a major source of information

　　D.creates an illusion of happiness rather than happiness itself.

　　39.We can learn from the last paragraph that the author believes

　　A.Happiness more often than not ends in sadness.

　　B.The anti-happy art is distasteful by refreshing.

　　C.Misery should be enjoyed rather than denied.

　　D.The anti-happy art flourishes when economy booms

　　40.Which of the following is true of the text?

　　A.Religion once functioned as a reminder of misery.

　　B.Art provides a balance between expectation and reality.

　　C.People feel disappointed at the realities of morality.

　　D.mass media are inclined to cover disasters and deaths.