[简答题]

The term Silent Generation may have been unflattering, but it was not inaccurate. (46)In the ’50s, America seemed both workable and working, which allowed us the luxury of growing up in peace and security: Unlike those who preceded or those who followed us, we were not expected to fight or die for our country. The grievances of poverty, race and inequality were no less valid than they are today, but we were largely unaware of them. And so, for most of us, they did not exist.
We were incapable of hero worship. Those we most admired, in fact, were not real heroes but the antiheroes of fiction or film. (47)For us, coolness was all; we prided ourselves on being excellent critics, even of ourselves, as if we had a third eye looking in rather than out. We did not care so much what the good fight was, so long as it was waged with effortless style and nonchalance.
(48)Skeptical vision is a quality of the good journalist--and our generation has produ

[填空题]Standage suggests that tea may have been more responsible than rum for the independence movement in Britain’s American colonies.

[单项选择]There may have been few things that protesters, politicians and activists share, but during the G20 meeting, they were united by their use of Twitter. The micro-blogging service was heavily used by all those involved with the meeting, be they debating in the chamber, quizzing politicians after briefings, or protesting in the street.
Social media was in use prior to the event too. The Metropolitan Police analyzed activity on websites such as Facebook, MySpace and many others to see how many were likely to join the call for protests at the G20. Plans for how many policemen and women should be put on the streets during the G20 were drawn up with regard to this analysis.
But it was during the two-day event that social media, in particular Twitter, came in to their own. Thousands of messages marked with a G20 tag passed through Twitter and organizations such as Indymedia had their own tags ’that helped to examine information about what happened during the protests.
For
A. Twitter can ease their temper and stop the debate.
B. They all enjoy the benefit of the service provided by Twitter.
C. With Twitter’s help, they can avoid attending the meeting from anywhere.
D. They can get useful briefings from politicians by using Twitter.

[单项选择]

The dot-com collapse may have been a disaster for Wall Street, but here in Silicon Valley, it was a blessing. It was the welcome end to an abnormal condition that very nearly destroyed the area in an overabundance of success. You see, the secret to the Valley’s astounding multiple-decade boom is failure. Failure is what fuels and renews this place. Failure is the foundation for innovation.
The valley’s business ecology depends on failure the same way the tree-covered hills around us depend on fire—it wipes out the old growth and creates space for new life. The valley has always been in danger of drowning in the unwelcome waste products of success—too many people, too expensive houses, too much traffic, too little office space and too much money chasing too few startups. Failure is the safety valve, the destructive renewing force that frees up people, ideas and capital and recombines them, creating new revolutions.
Consider how the Internet
A. its waste products of success.
B. its abundance in constructive failures.
C. its solid foundation for innovations.
D. its laid-off dot-com programmers.